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TREATISE ON SLAVERY. 



IN WHICH IS SHOWN FORTH 



THE EVIL OF SLAVEHOLDING 



FROM THE LIGHT OF NATUREIAND DIVINE REVELATION. 



BY JAMES DUNGAN. 



Columbia, speak ; let slavery's dirge be sung 
Wide o'er the world, the joyful sound begun : 
Shall bid the age of crime and suffering cease, 
And hail the dawn of freedom and of peace. 

Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ; 
for this is the law and the prophets."— Matt. \ii. 12. . 



VEVAY: 
PRINTED AT THE 'INDIANA REGISTER' OFFICE. 

1824. 

NEW. YORK : 

RE-PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY 

THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 

143 NASSAU STREET. 

1840. 



i 



■1* 



ix^ 



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INTRODUCTION 
TO THE NEW-YORK EDITION. 



The author of this work was the Rev. James Duncan, a learn- 
ed and faithful minister of the Gospel in Indiana, and father of 
the Hon. Alexander Duncan, now member of Congress from Cin. 
cinnati. It is a matter of regret, that a letter from the West, con- 
taining some further particulars respecting the author and his la- 
bors, has been mislaid and cannot be found. However, the work 
will speak for itself, wherever it shall be read, and will show its 
author to have been a man of uncommon powers of reasoning, and 
of uncommon clearness of vision, for his day, on the subject of 
slavery and abolition. The work was first published, as the title 
imports, at Vevay, in the state of Indiana, in the year 1824, and 
was accompanied by the following 

RECOMMExMDATION : 

This treatise has been highly recommended by several gentle- 
men of Kentucky and Indiana — the publisher selects, for the pre- 
sent, the following letter from Jesse L. Holman, Esq. one of the 
judges of the supreme court of Indiana, a gentleman well known to 
the citizens of this and the neighboring States. 

" I have been favored, for a few hours, with the manuscript of a 
' Treatise on Slavery,' by the Rev. James Duncan, and from a 
hasty perusal of the greater part of its contents, and the well known 
abilities of the author, I conceive it to be executed with a depth of 
thought and force of argument, that well deserves the attention of 
all inquirers after moral truth, and justly merits the patronage of 
the public." 

(Signed) Jesse L. Holman. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION. 
Of the moral law. ..*...... 7 

Of the law of nature 8 

CHAPTER I. 

1. Slavery defined. 13 

Appendages of Slavery, 14. 

CHAPTER II. 

2. History of servitude. . . . . ... 15 

The Antediluvians, 15— Nimrod, 16— Abraham, ib.— Egypt, 17 — 
Jewish, 18— The Golden Rule, 21— The Gibeonites, 23. 

CHAPTER III. 

3. Slaveholding a heinous sin. 25 

The Moral Law, 25— Moral Law Contradictory, 27— God's Great 

End, ib. — Requires Sin to Sustain it, 28 — Obstructs the Means 
of Grace, 29 — Against Natural Rights, 30 — Against Relative 
Duties, 31 — The First Commandment, 32 — The Second Com- 
raandment, 33 — The Third Commandment, 35 — The Fourth 
Commandment, 36 — The Fifth Commandment, 37 — The 
Sixth Commandment, 39 — The Seventh Commandment, 41 — 
The Eighth Commandment, 42 — The Ninth Commandment, 47 
— The Tenth Commandment, 48 — The Right of all Men to the 
World, 49 — Against Mercy to the Poor, 51 — Opposed to Repub- 
licanism, 53 — Hurtful to Masters and Slaves, 54 — Brings Na- 
tional Judgments, 59 — At War with the Church, 60 — Makes 
God a Slave, 63 — Unjust towards God, 65 — Against Infant Bap. 
tism, 66 — Against all Laws, Divine and Human, 67 — Produces 
1* 



vi CONTENTS. 

Partiality in Trials, 68— Violates the Rights of Conscience, 69— 
Will not admit of Prayer, 73— The Slaveholder's Prayer, 76— 
Hinders the Success of the Gospel, 78. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Arguments in favor of slavery 79 

CHAPTER V. 

The arguments from Scripture. . . . '. .87 

CHAPTER VI. 

The example of Christ 94 

CHAPTER VH. 

Of the duty of a slave to his master. . ... 97 

CHAPTER IX. 

Arguments in favor of slavery 103 

CHAPTER X. 

Of the real condition of slaveholers in relation to the 
JUSTICE OF God. l05 

CHAPTER XI. 

Of the duty of Christians relative to slavery. . , 107 
Soliloquy for a Dying Slaveholder, 115. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Practical improvement 118 

Gradualism, 123— Conclusion, 124~The Negro, 126. 

APPENDIX. 

Laws of Kentucky and Virginia relative to Slavery, 128 — Reply to 
Mr. Harris, 133 — A Method Proposed to prevent any Dangerous 
Consequences from a General Emancipation of the Slaves, 135 
—Note, 136, 



PREFACE 



The object of the present work, is not so much to render ob- 
noxious the cruel treatment of slaves, as to discuss the principle 
of slaveholding, and to show forth the iniquity of the practice. 
The cruel treatment of slaves has been often exposed to public 
view, by many able hands, who have also by judicious argu- 
ments refuted the most specious apologies that have been ad- 
vanced in favor of the principle. Yet, that the principle or mo- 
ral ground upon which slavery is practiced in the world, has 
been too lightly touched by modern writers, is manifest from 
two concessions, which most of them appear to admit. The 
first is, that slavery was authorized by the judicial law under the 
Old Testament. The second is, that the emancipation of slaves 
need not to be sudden, but gradual, lest the possessors of them 
should be too much impoverished, and lest the free inhabitants 
might be exposed to danger, if the blacks were all liberated at 
once. 

If the first of these concessions is admitted as just, namely, 
that if slavery in its present form was allowed of under the Old 
Testament, the practice may be defended under the New, be- 
cause every precept of the judicial law, must have liad the mo- 
ral law for its basis, so as in no respect to contradict it. If then 
slavery in its present form was morally just under the Old Tes- 
tament, it must be just under the New, for the moral law is as 
unchangeable as God himself. 

If the second of these concessions is just, to wit : the emanci- 
pation of slaves ought not to be sudden, but gradual, to prevent 
the penal evils of°poverty and other distresses which might 
accrue to the inhabitants in general ; it will go to justify the 
practice of slaveholding, because the only motive that men can 
have to practice slavery, is that itmay be a means of preventing 
poverty and other penal 'evils. If the fear of poverty or any 
penal sufferings will exculpate the possessors of slaves from 
blame, for a few months or years, it will do it for life ; and if 
some may be lawfully held to labor without wages, all may be 



Vlll PREFACE. 

held the same way ; and if the principle of slavery is morally 
wrong, it ought not to be practiced to avoid any penal evil, but if 
just, even the cruel treatment of slaves would not condemn the 
practice. The subject then which at this time calls forth the 
utmost exertions of the friends of humanity, is the great crimi- 
nality of slaveholding, or to shew the extreme guilt of that man 
who occupies the office and station of a slaveholder although he 
should treat his slaves with the utmost humanity as slaves. 
Agreeable to these remarks, the following treatise will be intro- 
duced with an inquiry concerning the moral law, considered as 
the law of nature, which binds all men to act conformably to its 
precepts, and condemns every practice or habit, that is not in 
every respect agreeable to its dictates. Then, in order to pre- 
pare the subject for an impartial examination, will be given a 
definition of slavery, with a delineation of the office and power 
of a slaveholder. If any reader should feel disposed to call in 
question the correctness of those definitions, let him suspend his 
judgment till he turns over to the appendix at the close of this 
work, where he will find some extracts from the laws of Ken- 
tucky and Virginia relative to slaves, which will prove those 
definitions to be perfectly correct. 

This attempt to overthrow the principle of slavery will consist 
of some abstract demonstrations, and some plain scriptural argu- 
ments. Those of the abstract kind will be twenty-nine in num- 
ber, every one of which, it is hoped, if carefully examined, will 
be found to be conclusive. One argument, if fair and just, is 
sufficient to establish a position, with an enlightened and unpre- 
judiced mind ; but when we consider that many readers are the 
opposite of both, a subject may be of that importance, as to re- 
quire all the collective force of argumentation that can be mus- 
tered to lead such to conviction. As the subject of slavery is of 
the highest importance, and deeply concerns the temporal and 
eternal states of men, it merits the greatest attention, and will 
call for a proportional degree of demonstration, both from scrip- 
ture and abstract principles, to convince the guilty of its crimi- 
nality. 

The design of this work is to persuade all that are engaged in 
the business of holding their fellow creatures in a state of unme- 
rited involuntary slavery, that they are guilty of a crime, not only 
of the highest aggravation, but one, that if persisted in, will ine- 
vitably lead them to perdition. 



INTRODUCTION 



In attempting to justify or condemn any act or practice, it 
cannot be amiss, in tlie first instance, to ascertain whether the 
matter of the thing required or forbidden, is moral or indifferent. 
If it is moral, it cannot be optional with us either to do it or 
not. For example : speaking' truth is moral and not indifferent, 
therefore it cannot be optional with us to either speak truth or 
falsehood ; but the moral law binds us to speak truth, every 
man to his neighbor. If the matter of the thing be indifferent, 
as that of eating certain kinds of food, it may be either right or 
wrong, according to the circumstances. If the practice of 
slaveholding is of a moral nature, and not indifferent, the rule 
by which we are to judge of it must be the moral law, and not 
either human laws, cu'stoms, habits, temporal ease, peace or 
safety. That slaveholding, whether right or wrong, is moral 
and not indifferent, there can be no dispute ; every person, then, 
who is seriously disposed to know his duty relative to the prac- 
tice, will compare it with the moral law, and form his judgment 
by that unerring rule ; and any one attempting to investigate 
the subject, with a design to either justify or condemn it, must 
take the moral law for his chief guide. This method we shall 
adopt ; that is, to open up the nature of the moral law% and lay 
it down as the foundation or rock upon which we purpose the 
following scheme of argumentation shall rest. 

OF THE MORAL LAW. 

The great end for which God made man was, that he should 
glorify God and enjoy him forever. By God's end in making 
man, we are to understand the proper motive to which he di- 
rected him by his law, and made it his indispensable duty and 
great privilege to attain. 

The rule which God gave to man when he created him, and 
which still binds him to glorify and enjoy him forever, is called 
the moral law. The moral law is a transcript of the divine cha- 
racter ; it forbids all sin, as being contrary to the holy nature of 
God, and binds all men to the performance of every duty relat- 
ing to God, and every duty relating to men. 



INTRODUCTION. 



OF THE LAW OF NATURE. 



The moral law is called the law of nature, because it origin- 
ated in the will of God, was made known to man in his primi- 
tive state by a divine impression of it on his soul, and revealed 
in the great book of nature, which book of nature is no other 
than God's works of creation and providence, representing to 
the minds of mankind the relations in which they stand to God 
as his dependent creatures, and the various relations in which 
they stand to one another ; all w^hich show forth the will of God 
as a rule that binds mankind to perform all relative duties vrhich 
they owe to God, and all relative duties which they owe to one 
another. For example — God's creating us, his preserving us, and 
giving us rain and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and 
gladness, are moral reasons why we should glorify his name. And 
the relations of husbands and wives, parents and children, show the 
reciprocal obligations such persons are under to perform relative 
duties ; and the necessary dependence of mankind upon one 
another as equals, for mutual protection, lays them under obliga- 
tions to aiford mutual protection to one another. 

The moral law made known to man in the book of nature, 
and more perfectly in the volume of Divine revelation, corres- 
ponds exactly with the relations which God has established be- 
tween himself and his creatures, and with all the relations which 
he has established among his creatures ; yea, these relations are 
so essential to the existence of moral obligations, that they are 
the very foundation of it ; so that God's word as a written rule, 
when it requires duties that are purely moral, binds mankind 
only to the performance of such duties as arise out of these re- 
lations. Neither would it be consistent with the Divine charac- 
ter to require any acts of obedience from his creatures, which 
would contradict these relations that he has established. God 
has a sovereign right to form new relations, which might occa- 
sion new obligations to duty ; — but no new relations made to ex- 
ist, and authorised by God, will ever be allowed to destroy or 
counteract the natural relations which he has already establish- 
ed,''or to prevent the duties which arise from them. If the re- 
lations which God has made to exist between himself and his 
creatures were to cease, and all those which he has made to ex. 
ist among his creatures were dissolved, all moral obligation 
would be at an end. Every sin or criminal act of any subject 
of the moral law, is an attempt to destroy some one or more of 
these relations ; to prevent which, civil penalties have been ap- 
pointed, and although such penalties do in some instances dis- 
solve natural relations, yet the ultimate end of such penalties is 
to protect the innocent in the peaceable enjoyment of them. 



^^^ INTEODUCTION. XI 

The fall of man occasioned a new relation to exist among 
mankind, which is that between civil rulers and their subjects. 
The ultimate end of civil government is the suppression of vice 
and the protection of the innocent, or in other words, to estab- 
lish and defend these relations which subsist between God and 
his creatures, and the natural relations which exist among his 
creatures, but in no respect to change or dissolve them. 

So sure as God has established these immutable relations, and 
has obliged his creatures to act agreeable to his will in their 
several relations, he must have granted inalienable rights to them, 
corresponding with their several relations and reciprocal obliga. 
tions to duty ; as the right to worship and serve God without 
being hindered by man, or any human authority, and the right 
of all conjugal, parental, and fihal duties. Therefore, every law 
of man that contravenes those relations, and intercepts the right 
of doing any of those duties which naturally arise out of these 
relations, must be at war with the rights of man, and in open 
rebellion against the law of God. 

Civil power in the hands of civil rulers, v/hcre they are not 
usurpers, is delegated to them from the people, who are the pro- 
per constituents of civil government. The people, prior to that 
delegation, have a right as individuals, and unorganised, to sup- 
press crimes by punishing the guilty and protecting the inno- 
cent ; but those duties, which would be very inconvenient for 
them to do in an unorganised state, or in their individual capaci- 
ty, they, in constituting a civil government, delegate to repre- 
sentatives to perform in their name. But in this delegation they 
do not relinquish their rights, but only employ agents to do for 
them what would be inconvenient to do themselves. 

The general rights of men may be distinguished into two 
classes. 1. Such as are capable of delegation. 2. Such as are 
incapable. Those rights which are capable of delegation, are 
the rights of protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. 
These rights which are incapable of delegation are these private 
rights which have been defined, the defence and protection of 
which is the proper end of civil government ; such as the right 
to serve God agreeable to his will, and according to the relations 
in which they stand to hira, and the rights of private rela- 
tive duties which they owe to one another, as the duties of 
husbands to wives, and wives to husbands, parents to children, 
and children to parents. Mankind cannot deleofate to representa- 
tives or to others their own rights of duty to God, nor their own 
right to perform those private relative dutier, that they owe to 
one another, which have been described. If mankind, then, 
have no power to delegate to others their private rights, it would 
be still more unreasonable to attempt to delegate from their 
children the same rights, and equally unreasonable to attempt it 
with others that are not their children or descendants. There- 
fore, all mankind have an inalienable right to serve God accord- 



Xll INTEODUCTION. 

ing to the relation in which they stand to him, and an inaliena- 
ble right to do all relative duties lo one another, without being 
hindered by any human authority, which rights imply all the 
characteristics ot freemen, considered as subjects of civil gov- 
ernment. In contending for freedom, in opposition to slavery, 
we design to plead for no more than those rights of duty to God, 
and rights of relative duties which mankind owe to one another. 

These views of the rights of man, are by no means at vari- 
ance with a man's right to transfer to another his personal free- 
dom, as regpects his labor, for a time, or for life, which any man 
may sell as well as his other propertjr, but it will condemn any 
attempt to sell his right of duty to God, or any private relative 
duties which he owes to mankind, both of Vw'hich are inalien- 
able. 

Query.— Whether the civil law of any government can be 
the supreme rule of duty 1 

Answer 'The supreme rule of duty must be the moral law, 

but not the civil law, neither ought civil requisitions to be re- 
garded, if found to be contrary to the moral law. If the civil 
law was the supreme i-ule, it would not admit the moral law to 
iiave any authority, further than it might be made subservient 
to the civil law. 

2. It would suppose a people prior to their political constitu- 
tion, or to the existence of civil law among them, tp be without 
law ; and that the representatives of a nation, while framing a 
constitution, and making laws to be above and out of the reach 
of all law, both divine and human, so as to have no moral rule 
to bind them, to make the constitution and laws good and just. 

3. It would suppose the people to be obliged to adopt that 
constitution, and submit to the laws, however cruel and 
tyrannical. 

4. It would suppose every constitution and laws, made by re. 
presentatives, to be perfectly just, and the representatives them- 
selves to be infallible men, for as sure as we admit a civil rule 
to be wrong, it supposes a law of higher authority which de- 
nounces it wrong. Or if we admit that representatives are fal- 
lible men, it supposes a law that they are liable to transgress in 
instituting civil laws, which can be none other than the moral 
Jaw. Therefore the civil law cannot be the supreme rule of 
duty to any people, but the supreme rule of duty is the moral 
law, which is before every law, and is that eternal and un- 
changeable rule, which is binding upon all men, to which every 
human law ought to be conformed, or else it is sinful. Says 
Cicero — " There is not one moral law for Rome, another for 
Athens, and another for Sparta, but one moral law is equally 
binding on all nations." 

These fundamental principles being laid down, we shall at* 
tempt an investigation of the subject proposed. 



SLAVERY 



In discussing this subject it will be proper, 

I. To define slavery. 

II. To give a brief history of servitude in general. 

III. Show, by a course of argumentation, that slave- 
holding is condemned by the word of God, and contrary 
to the law of nature ; and, 

IV. Try to point out the duty of both emancipators 
and others in relation to the practice. 



CHAPTER L 



I. SLAVERY DEFINED. 



By slavery we do not intend such servants as might 
voluntarily bind or indenture themselves for any term, or 
for life, nor the subjects of kings or princes, who are fre- 
quently called servants, nor such servants as might bind 
themselves for any term ; nor do we intend soldiers, who 
are often called servants, nor those who may have been 
or may be condemned for certain crimes and sold for 
servants, nor those who might have agreed to have been 
sold for a term of years, to pay their passage from one 
country to another, nor such as were taken prisoners in 
war and sold for slaves during life, which it appears was 
customary in ancient eastern countries, and among the 



14 SLAVERY DEFINED. 

Greeks were called, servants under the 5^oke. But by 
slavery, we mean that of involuntary, unmerited, perpetual, 
hereditary slavery, without any conditions or limitations, 
or supposed crimes to be a legal cause for that involun- 
tary slavery. By slaves we mean such beings of the 
human race as are, with their offspring, to perpetual gen= 
erations, considered as PROPERTY; compelled by 
superior force, unconditionally to obey their owners, liable 
to be given and received ; to go and to come ; to marry 
or forbear ; to be separated when married ; to eat, drink, 
sleep, labor, and be beaten at the discretion of their mas- 
ters ; this is slavery. 

With slaveholders we do not class all that have the 
persons of slaves in their power, for some have them that 
are making conscience of educating them, and are dis- 
posed at some future time to set them at liberty. Others 
may not have come to a full discovery of the sin of hold- 
ing slaves, yet are laying their minds open to conviction, 
and are striving, by reading, meditation, and prayer, to 
know their duty relative to the business of slavery. A 
real slaveholder is one who not only has the persons of 
slaves in his power, but has a full determination to retain 
them in bondage, and to bequeath them and their poster, 
ity to his succeeding heirs. By a slaveholder we mean 
one who has a power, without any control of man, to con- 
travene all the preceptive obligations of the divine law 
relative to the slave, to intercept and prevent all the rela- 
tive duties which he owes to God and to his relations and 
neighbors. In short, it is a power over all those private 
inalienable rights and relative duties, which no civil au- 
thority upon earth has either a right to tolerate or prevent. 
It is no just objection to this definition of a slaveholder's 
power, that the laws of some slave states will punish the 
man who kills his slave, because the same law admits him 
to exercise all that unlimited power which has been de- 
scribed, while the slave is alive, but takes no cognizance 
of his case till after he is killed. 

APPENDAGES OF SLAVERY. 

There are three things which are not in every possible 
case essential to the being of slavery, yet are essential to 



HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 15 

its permanent existence, and to the stability of that gov- 
ernment which authorises slavery. The first is, thai the 
slaves must be kept in a state of ignorance of every spe- 
cies or branch of literature, to prevent them from being 
able to plead their right to freedom, and to prevent them 
from contriving any successful methods to escape from 
bondage. 

The second is, the necessity of all slaves being out- 
lawed, or excluded from the privilege of bearing testimony 
in any court, for or against any free man. This lays 
them open to all possible abuses which human depravity 
might suggest, and in particular subjects the female slaves 
to the lawless will of the master, to become his prostitutes 
at discretion. 

The third thing is, that in the economy of slavery, no 
respect can, in ordinary cases, be had to any relation, 
nor to private relative duties ; but the authority of the 
master comes in prior to any relative obligation. Though 
some masters may permit their slaves to live with their 
relations, and allow them the exercise of some relative 
duties, yet all these rights and privileges are liable to be 
suspended at the discretion of the master. 



CHAPTER II. 

HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 

II. A brief history of servitude. 

THE ANTEDILUVIANS. 

The first intimation of slavery is in Genesis vi. 11. 
" The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth 
was filled with violence." The business of slavery is not 
here mentioned, but it seems to be implied in the general 
expression. The earth was filled with violence, which is 
again repeated in the 18th verse. Violence signifies a 
forcible usurpation of power over the rights of others, 
which may imply either the right of property, or liberty, 
or both. As slavery is the highest degree of usurpation, 
and violence was the crying sin of that age, we have good 



16 HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 

reason to believe that it was one capital ingredient of that 
enormous guilt which brought upon them the greatest 
stroke of divine vengeance that ever befel the human 
race since the fall of Adam. 

NIMROD. 

The next intimation is in Gen. x. 8. " And Cush 
begat Nimrod : he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 
He was a mighty hunter before the Lord ; vvdierefore it 
is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the 
Lord : and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel," &;c. 
Nimrod is not here literally termed a slaveholder ; but he 
is represented as a cruel tyrant, whose business was that 
of hunting and enslaving mankind, even as slave traders 
do the Africans. 

^ ABRAHAM. 

In the history of Abraham, we have accounts or ser- 
vants, but no account of slaves. Gen. xiv. 14. " He 
armed his trained servants, born in his house, three hun- 
dred and eighteen." That these were not slaves, but 
only common servants, is evident from their being trained 
to the use of arms, which was quite inconsistent with the 
condition of slavery. 

Secondly. The age of Abraham was so recent a period 
from the universal deluge, that mankind were not all or- 
ganized into political governments ; so that patriarchal 
government was then necessary, which was no other than 
that of the great arid wealthy presiding over, governing 
and defending such of the poorer class as were disposed 
to put themselves under their protection, to be their safe- 
guard against lawless bands which might be disposed to 
live by plunder. That Abraham was one of those patri- 
archal rulers is evident from ch. xxiii. 6. " Hear us, my 
lord, thou art a mighty prince among us ; in the choice of 
thy sepulchres bury thy dead." This may be compared 
with the history of Job, as another example of patriarchal 
government, chapter xvii. Abraham was commanded to 
circumcise all born in his house, or bought with his 
money : but this command, instead of recognizing the 
kwfuhiess of slaveholding, is pointedly against it. It first 



HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 17 

supposes it lawful to purchase men for servants, which 
under peculiar circumstances is always lawful. 2d. In- 
stead of riveting the chains of involuntary, unmerited, 
hereditary slavery upon them, they were to be circum- 
cised, and thereby made members of the same church 
with their masters, and so made to have a right to the 
same privileges, both civil and ecclesiastical, which be- 
longed to the Jews ; one of which was exemption from a 
state of slavery ; and this covenant obligation upon 
Abraham and his posterity to perpetual generations, ab- 
solutely precluded perpetual hereditary slavery from ever 
existing in the Jewish nations. 

EGYPT. 

The next account we have in scripture of servitude was 
that of Israel's bondage in Egypt, which was notconriplete 
slavery, neither was it to be compared to that which is 
practised in these United States, or in the West Indies. 
The Israelites were subject to cruel oppression in Egypt, 
but they had the privilege of residing on their own premises 
in the land of Goshen ; and of domestic comfort with their 
own families, without being sold and scattered far away 
from each other. They also had their own individual 
property, as flocks and herds, and meat and drink in abun- 
dance, as appeared from their murmurings and expressions 
of regret for leaving the land of Egypt. Exodus xvi. 3. 
"And the children of Israel said unto them, would to God 
that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of 
Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and where we had 
bread to the full." This was said on the fifteenth day of 
the second month, after they left Egypt, so that it was a 
matter fresh in their memories. Their bondage did not 
consist in being the private property of individuals through- 
out the nation, but in being subject to the arbitrary power 
of a tyrant, who had dominion over their bodies and lives 
at his pleasure ; and although he did not hold them all at 
once in a state of actual servitude, yet he had carried on 
a constant practice of levying a tribute of laborers from 
among them, to be employed in mortar and brick, and in 
building store cities for Pharaoh, and were liable to be 
beaten and abused while employed in the service of the 
2* 



i 



18 HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 

public. These, together with the murder of their male 
children for a time, were the principal ingredients of that 
bondage which Israel suffered in Egypt, which all taken 
together were less intolerable than that complete slavery 
which is now practised in the United States. 

JEV\riSH. 

The next account of servitude is in Leviticus xxv. 44-46. 
" Both thy bondmen and bondmaids which thou shalt have 
shall be of the heathen that are round about you, of them 
shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the 
children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of 
them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you 
which they begat in your land, and they shall be your 
possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for 
your children after you, to inherit them for a possession ; 
they shall be your bondmen forever." From this citation 
it is evident that servitude was admitted among the Jews, 
but it was materially different from modern slavery. As 
first — They were to be purchased from the heathens round 
about them, and neither stolen or taken by force. 2d — 
They were liable to be emancipated as soon as they com- 
plied with the ordinances of circumcision, and if they did 
not comply with that rite, their children must of necessity 
have been free at the ordinary time of native Jews, because 
all the Jews were bound to circumcise all that were born 
in their houses, or bought with their money, in consequence 
of which they became Jews, who could not be retained in 
bondage more than six years. 3d — If such as were pur- 
chased in an adult age, refused to comply with the ordi- 
nance of circumcision, they were only subject to servitude 
until the year of jubilee ; but in that case their bondage 
did not entail the same to their posterity. That all servants 
among the Jews in every age were initiated into the Jew- 
ish church by circumcision, is as clearly revealed in the 
word of God, as any one truth it contains. Gen. xvii. 10. 
" This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me 
and you and thy seed after thee. Every man child among 
you shall be circumcised — verse 12 ; and he that is eight 
days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child 
in your generations, he that is born in the house or bought 



HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 19 

with money of any stranger which is not of thy seed — 
verse 13. He that is born in the house or he that is 
bought with thy money must needs be circumcised, and 
my covenant s'^hall be in your flesh for an everlasting 
covenant." 

Secondly. — Circumcision entitled every subject of that 
ordinance to eat the passover, which supposes his initiation 
into the Jewish church and nation to be indisputable — Exo- 
dus, xii, 23. "And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, 
this is the ordinance of the passover ; there shall no stran- 
ger eat thereof, but every man servant that is bought for 
money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat 
thereof; a foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat 
thereof." 

Thirdly.— 'No Hebrew could be in servitude longer than 
six years. Exodus, xxi. 2,—" If thou buy an Hebrew ser- 
vant six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall 
go out free for nothing." Compared with Deut. xv, 12. 
If then circumcision made every servant bought with mo- 
ney a Jew, and no Jew would be retained in servitude more 
than six years, the unavoidable consequence must be, that 
there could be no perpetual involuntary servants among 
the Jews. The whole argument runs thus : All Jews 
were bound to circumcise all born in their houses, or 
bought with money ; circumcision made every one who 
was a subject of circumcision a Jew. No Jew could be a 
servant longer than six years, except he was so of choice. 
Therefore there could be no perpetual servants under the 
Jewish dispensation. 

The expression, "ye shall take them for an inheritance 
for your children after you," means that the same persons 
thus purchased of the heathen around them were not 
to be made free at the death of the purchaser, but were 
bound to serve their children. The last words, they shall 
be your bondmen forever, can only mean until the year of 
jubilee, which may be evinced from two reasons, al- 
though the phrase forever, and the word ever (in scripture) 
most certainly signifies an endless duration ; yet it is 
sometimes used in a limited sense, as to the time of the 
Old Testament. Leviticus xviii. 1 5. To the year of jubi- 
lee, Deut. XV. 17, to man's life time, 1st Samuel i. 22. 



20 HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 

It signifies a long indefinite time, Joshua ii. 7, The sense of 
the word ever, or forever, may be known by the particular 
duration of that thing to which the expression is applied. 
Thus it signifies an endless duration, when it is used to 
express the duration of the saint's happiness in heaven, 
because the saints will eternally exist,, and to express the 
duration of hell's torments, because the wicked will eter- 
nally exist. When it means only a temporary duration, it 
has a relation to some period which will necessarily have an 
end, and signifies that entire period. Thus it is sometimes 
used to express the duration of some blessing or privilege, 
properly restricted to the old testament dispensation, when 
it signifies the whole time of that dispensation, so a man's 
state of servitude was said to be forever, when it meant 
that it should continue until the year of jubilee, though it 
must of necessity have terminated with the period, in 
which case the temporary duration of that period deter- 
mines the sense of the expression forever, shews it to be 
temporary and not eternal. 

That the expression (bondservant forever) means only a 
temporary duration will further appear from God's aim in 
appointing the ordinance of jubilee, which was to give lib- 
erty to all that were in bondage. Lev. xsv. 10. " And 
ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty 
throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, it 
shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every 
man unto his own famil3^" Josephus, who had a better 
right to know the latitude to which the jubilee extended 
than any other ancient writer of which we have any 
knowledge, expressly says that it exten'ded to slaves. — =■ 
(See his Antiquities, page 73, quarto.) 

Secondly. That the expression forever, was limited 
by^the jubilee, is evident from the application of the phrase 
in other places. Lev. xxv.39 — 40. " And if thy broth* 
er that dvvelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold 
unto thee, thou shall not compel him to serve thee as a 
bond servant, but as an hired servant, as a sojourner ; 
he shall be with thee and serve thee until the year of 
jubilee." But the person that is here said to serve until 
the year of jubilee is called a servant forever. Exodus 
XXI. 2. 7 — Deut. xv. 12, 17. Objection. If no servant 



HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 21 

could be compelled to serve more than six years after be- 
ing circumcised, what classes of servants were bound to 
serve until the year of jubilee? Ans. Such Jewish ser- 
vants as refused freedom at the expiration of six years' ser- 
vice, and such of the heathen as refused to be received 
into the Jewish church by circumcision, and such as were 
convicted of crimes, which last is attested by Josephus. 

THE GOLDEN RULE. 

Among the Jews, agreeable to the nature and circum- 
stances of servitude, as it has now been defined, the golden 
rule laid down by Jesus Christ, might have been applied 
in its fullest latitude by both masters and servants. '* In 
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them." This will appear from the 
peculiar circumstances of their condition. 1st. Servants 
bought of the heathen were most apt to be captives taken 
in war, or persons convicted of crimes ] but none were 
kidnapped, because the man-thief and the receiver were 
both condemned to suffer death by the law of Moses. 
2d. The heathen nations around the Jews were all ci- 
vilized, and existed under organized governments, and- 
could have no temptations to kidnap and sell their own 
people, except such as were legally convicted of crimes, 
or captives taken in war. 3d. Though servants from 
among the heathen were liable to be some captives, some 
convicts, others debtors, their condition was made better 
by becoming servants to the Jews, because they were ad- 
mitted to all the .privileges of the Jewish church as soon 
as they were prepared for it. 4th. If they did not com- 
ply with the rite of circumcision, yet their children were 
made free by circumcision, while they, viz. their parents, 
were to be made free at the jubilee. But that which 
rendered their servitude quite tolerable, was the law of 
God which regulated the government of servants. Ex. 
xxi. 26. <• If a man smite the eye of his servant or the 
eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go for his 
eye's sake. And if he smite out his man servant's tooth 
or his maid servant's tooth he shall let him go for his 
tooth's sake." The rule which obliged a master to lib- 
erate his servant for sake of an eye or a tooth, would do 



22 HISTOEY OF SERVITUDE. 

equally the same in any case of maiming or dismember- 
ing of the body, verse 20. " And if a man smite his ser- 
vant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand 
he shall surely be punished." That this punishment was 
death is manifest from Lev. v. 22. *' Notwithstanding 
if he continue a day or two he shall not be punished, for 
he is his money." Wilful murder was only punishable 
by death according to the divine law. Therefore if the 
Servant corrected with the rod was to continue a day or 
two, it would shew that his master in correcting him had 
no design to kill him, more especially as the servant was 
his money, he could have no motive to take his life. 

2dly. To prevent severe treatment, and secure a com- 
fortable living to bond servants, the law of God absolute- 
ly prohibited all persons from taking up a servant mere- 
ly for running away from his master. Deut. xxiii. 15. 
*'Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant who 
is escaped from his master unto thee ; he shall dwell with 
thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose 
— in one of thy gates where it liketh him best : thou shalt 
not oppress him." 

3dly. All bond servants, hirelings and sojourners 
amongst the Jews, had all the profits arising from their 
lands every seventh year which would be very consider- 
able, Lev. XXV. 1, 7, which taken in connection with all 
other circumstances of alleviation prevented their servi- 
tude from meriting the name of slavery. 

From the view now taken of servitude amongst the 
Jews, it is evident that although they had bondmen and 
bond maids, there were no slaves allowed among them. 
And it may be added that the small degree of bondage 
which was authorized, was in virtue of a positive revela- 
tion of God's will, and was peculiar to the Jewish econo- 
my, and not morally binding on all nations ; should any 
inquire why it was suited to the Old Testament, and not to 
the New, it may be answered there were necessary duties, 
to be performed by the members of that church, which 
could not be done without subjecting them to ceremonial 
uncleanness, and many laborious exercises about the al- 
tar and the temple services, which would have occupied 
loo much of the time and attention of the true worshipers 



HISTORY OF SERVITUDE. 33 

of Jehovah, without marring and interrupting their wor- 
ship, which rendered servants from among the heathen 
necessary. 

THE GIBEONITES. 

This was completely exemplified in the case of the 
Gibeonites, who on account of the oath which the princes 
of the congregation had made to them, to preserve their 
lives, were spared, but on account of their gross decep- 
tion and falsehood to obtain that oath, were condemned to 
a state'* of servitude — Joshua ix. 22. And Joshua called 
for them, and he spake unto them saying, wherefore have 
ye beguiled us, saying we are very far from you, when 
you dwelt among us. Now therefore ye are cursed, and 
there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and 
hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my 
God, verse 27. '* And Joshua made them that day hew- 
ers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation!, 
and for the altar of the Lord, even unto this day in the 
place which the Lord should choose." 

The Gibeonites were condemned to be hev/ers of wood 
and drawers of water to the congregation and to the altar 
of the Lord; that is to the nation in their public assem- 
blies ; and to serve at the altar and the temple in preparing 
wood and water, and in such services as were subservi- 
ent to the public ordinances of the Lord, about which his 
people were to be engaged; all which supposed them to be 
the public property of the nation, but not the private 
property of any individuals, and were only liable to be 
called out to the service of public assemblies, and to the 
service of the sanctuary when their service was required, 
which must have been done by levying a tribute of as ma- 
ny persons as might be useful at such times. The same 
persons might be allowed to retire to their own homes, 
and others called forth to succeed them in their turn, 
while we have a good reason to believe they were allow- 
ed a due compensation for their labors. 

That the Gibeonites were public servants to the nation, 
and not private slaves to individuals, is evident from the 
form of expression used by Joshua in passing the sen- 
tence upon them, and also from their actual condition in 



24 HISTORY OF SERVITTTDE. 

after times, particularly in the days of Saul. Saul thought 
to slay them in his zeal for the children of Israel. 2 Sam^ 
XXI. 2-5. " He consumed them and devised against 
them, that he might destroy them from remaining in any 
of the coasts of Israel." From which it is manifest that 
they could not be the private property of individuals dis- 
persed throughout the nation. Had they been private 
property, Saul could net have shewn his zeal for the child- 
ren of Israel by destroy i. ' g them. It is further evident 
from their serving in the armies of Israel, which is an em- 
ployment ill adapted to the condition of slaves ; also from 
their return with the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, 
which could hardiy have been expected had they been slaves. 

From the history of servitude now given, and 
from the nature and different forms of it as recorded in 
scriptures, it appears that there never was such a thing 
as slavery amongst the Jews before the Babylonish cap- 
tivity, and it would be a difficuh task to prove that it ever 
had a being in its present form in any nation, from the 
deluge to the times of the Greeks and Romans, who both 
were in the habit of enslaving their captives taken in war. 
It is certain that the king of Assyria did not make slaves 
of the ten tribes of Israel ; but placed them in different 
parts of his empire, to live by their industry, allowed to 
be incorporated with his own subjects. It is also evident 
from the scriptures that the king of Babylon did not 
make slaves of the Jews, but gave them the privilege of 
building houses, and planting vineyards, and living by 
their own industry, and made a selection of the most 
learned and active to take part in the government of the 
empire. 

Having now given a history of servitude from the scrip- 
tures, down to the time of the Jews' captivity in Babylon, 
in order to come at the main subject intended by this trea- 
tise, we shall not detain the reader with a further detail 
of the history of slavery, but refer him to Clarkson's Es- 
says on Slavery, which containabrief account of slavery 
among the Greeks and Romans, with a correct history of 
African slavery. 



THE MORAL LAW. 25 



CHAPTER III. 

SLAVEIIOLDING A HEINOUS SIN. 

III. We are now to prove thai slavery, according to the 
common acceptation of the term, is a heinous sin, con- 
demned by the word of God, and repugnant to the law of 
nature. 

THE MORAL LAW. 

The first argument may be taken from the nature of 
the moral law, and its universal obligation upon mankind. 

In our introduction it has been shewn that the moral 
law is a transcript of the divine character. That it is call- 
ed the law of nature, because it is discoverable in the book 
of nature, which exhibits to the view of mankind the va- 
rious relations in which they stand to God and to one an- 
other, and as a law binds them to act agreeable to these 
relations, and we may now add, that the word of God is 
only the same law more perfectly revealed, together with 
a display of the economy of redemption. The moral 
law as a written revelation, and the law of nature as it is 
revealed in the book of nature, being the same as to mor- 
al obligation, it is impossible that the one can contradict or 
oppose the other. 

To apply these principles to the business of slave-hold- 
ing, it may be safely admitted, that if the practice has 
nothing to justify it but the civil law, while it stands op- 
posed to the moral law, it must be criminal. Slavehold- 
ing cannot be defended in virtue of an inherent power pos- 
sessed by man, antecedent to the existence of civil govern- 
ment, because in that state of society mankind are all 
equally entitled to enjoy freedom, and are all in duty 
bound to defend their own personal rights, and the natural 
rights of others, as far as is competent to them in that ca- 
pacity : therefore, mankind in that unorganized condition 
which necessarily precedes'^all organized states, can have 
no right to enslave one another, but on the contrary are 
bound to protect each other against any attempts which 
might be made to deprive them of either life, liberty, or 
3 



26 THE MORAL LAW= 

property, and are bound by the moral law to adopt the 
best method which may give strength and energy to their 
lawful efforts to secure their natural rights ; but the wis- 
est and best method which has yet been found to secure 
the natural rights of man, is for all the members of a com- 
munity to concentrate by delegations their legal right of 
defending their private privileges into the hands of repre- 
sentatives, that by their agency they may better perform 
those duties to themselves and others which they were 
bound in a private capacity to have done, as far as was 
competent to them. 

If the members of a community can and do transfer 
from themselves to representatives their right to freedom^ 
that is, their natural rights to serve God according to the 
relations in which they stand to him, and their right to 
perform all relative duties to one another, slavery may be 
justified, if not, it must be condemned. But none are dis- 
posed to plead for a transfer of their personal freedom ; 
therefore it is retained still in the hands of the people. 
The point is perfectly obvious, for if the members of a com- 
munity have no right in an unorganized state to deprive 
one another of life, liberty or property, they cannot trans- 
fer a right to others which they never possessed themselves^ 
If, then, no such right was or ever could be transferred 
from the people to their representatives, the representatives 
themselves can have no moral right to deprive any of the 
community of life, liberty, or property, except they forfeit 
their right by crimes, for civil rulers cannot exercise a pow- 
er which they never either had or could have. But it is 
self-evident, that if a people or nation can have no right to 
enslave one another within the hmits of their own ju- 
risdiction or territories, they can have still less without 
their own boundaries^ or in other parts of the world, be- 
cause neither political divisions of lands, nor natural divi- 
sions by rivers, chains ©f mountains or seas, can make 
void the moral law. Therefore, wherever a people dele- 
gate a power to representatives to enslave any of the hu- 
man race, it cannot be a moral power, but it is mere 
physical power, which is the power of force, and when 
physical force, striptof moral obligation, is exercised to de- 
prive mankind of their natural rights to freedom, it is only 



god's great end. 27 

another name for the most cruel tyranny ; so that slave- 
holding is contrary to the law of nature, is downright tyran- 
ny, and an usurpation of power over the rights of man. 

MORAL LAW CONTRADICTORY. 

Secondly — Every practice must be sinful v,'hich tends 
to set the moral law at war with itself; but slaveholding 
is of that nature. Therefore, 

If slaveholding is just, it must be the master's duty to 
retain the slave in his service, and to prevent him from 
deserting it. But it is the slave's duty to desert his ser- 
vice if he can have a fair opportunity to escape ; yea, 
most of slaveholders will acknowledge that were they 
in the slave's place, they would try to escape from their 
servitude ; which represents the moral law to be at war 
with itself; first making it to be the master's duty to retain 
the slave in servitude, and at the same instantmakingitthe 
slave's duty to desert his service ; in that case moral right 
would be contending with moral right. 

If slaveholding is lawful in the sight of God, it must be 
the indispensable duty of the slaves' master to pray to 
God that the slaves and their posterity may be kept in 
bondage forever. But the moral law makes it the indis- 
pensable duty of slaves to pray to God that they and their 
posterity may be delivered from bondage, agreeable to 
Paul's direction, be ye not servants of men. But when 
two prayers contradict one another, one of them must be 
wrong, because the moral law cannot contradict itself in 
its obligations upon men, neither does the gospel contain 
contradictory promises adapted to contradictory prayers. 

god's great END. 

Thirdly — Every practice must be wrong that is at 
variance with God's great end in making man, which 
was that he should glorify God and enjoy him forever; 
but slaveholding is of that description. 

For men to be in a state of slavery is to be under the 
complete dominion of their masters, so as not to be at 
liberty to dispose of their time for the service of God or 
the enjoyment of him, but are liable to be prevented from 
reading, meditation and prayer. God commands all 



28 REQUIRES SIN TO SUSTAIN IT. 

men to *' seek first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness," and has promised that all other things shall be 
added. But the slave is bound first to submit to his mas- 
ter's authority, come what will of the command of God, 
or the moral end of his creation. 

The slaveholder's power over the slave is an authority 
which he possesses over the private relative duties of the 
slave, without being controlled by the laws of government. 
It is the usurpation of that power in which tl o sin of 
slaveholding consists. The cruel administratii.. of that 
power, is only an ag-gravation of the crime ; but the grand 
radical point in which the most deadly criminaliiy lies, is 
the usurped office or station which he occupies. Thus 
the grand reason why a tyrant's throat ought to be cut, is 
not so much because his adm'nistration is cruel, but be- 
cause he has usurpt that office or station which admits of 
neither bounds nor restraints to his cruelty ; and such is 
the station of a slaveholder, that without control he can 
prevent the slave from answering the great end of his 
creation, which was to gJorify God and enjoy him for* 
ever. 

REQUIRES SIN TO SUSTAIN IT. 

Fourthhj — That practice must be criminal which of 
necessity requires sin to support it; but slaveiiolding is of 
that nature. Therefore it is itself sinful. 

The practice of slaveholding can have no permanent 
existence in state, kingdom, or commonwealth, without 
restraining ihe slaves from learning; for if slaves should 
once be universally taught to read, write, and nllowed to 
make proficiency in other branches of literature, it would 
be impossible to retain them in bondage, for they would 
then be able to plead their own cause against their anti- 
christian masters, and keep their consciences in perpetual 
torment; so also liable by reading, and the use of maps, 
to understand the geography of the country where they 
reside, so as to know the most eligible route to ti;ke in at- 
tempting to escape. But to prevent by force any of man- 
kind from the improvement of their intellectual faculties, 
is to invertthe order of nature, is a contradiction of God's 
great end in giving mankind those faculties, by reducing 



OBTRTJCTS THE MEANS OF GRACE. 29 

them down to the level of brute creatures, which is a crime 
so directly at war with the very light of nature and con. 
science, that it appears almost an insult to the human 
understanding to attempt its further demonstration. 

OBSTRUCTS THE MEANS OF GRACE. 

Fifthly — Every practice must be criminal that neces- 
sarily obstructs the means of grace, and tends to prevent 
the salvation of sinners. Butslaveholding is of that nature. 
To restrain the slaves from learning, has been shewn 
to be a nece&sary appendage of slavery. But to learn to 
read the word ot God is an important means of knowing 
the will of God, revealed to mankind for their salvation ; 
therefore to restrain any of the human race from the 
knowledge of God's written word, is in the first instance 
a high insult upon the God of heaven whose end in giv- 
ing mankind a written revelation, was that they should 
read it, and thereby acquire a knowledge of his method of 
salvation, and escape from the wrath to come, and be made 
faithful subjects of his kingdom and government. Sup- 
pose some great earthly potentate was to promulgate a 
code of laws for the good government of his subjects, ac- 
companied with a positive injunction upon all people un- 
der his dominion to read it and live conformable to it as 
rules of civil duty. If a certain class of his subjects were 
to exert their utmost influence to hinder as many of the 
community as they could have under their power from 
reading ii, merely to answer their own wordly interest, 
they could not be reputed better than traitors to his gov- 
ernment. How much more criminal then must be the 
conduct of those who restrain the subjects of the great 
potentate of heaven and enrth, who is king of kings and 
lord of lords from reading that revelation of his will which 
he has given to his subjects, to teach them to glorify and 
enjoy him forever. 

Again, to prevent any of mankind from reading the 
word of God, is to do that which tends to prevent their 
salvation, because it prevents the means leading to the 
end. It prevents them from the knowledge of God's 
written law his gospel doctrines and promises, and from 
the hope of eternal life, and implies a sacrificing the sin- 
3* 



30 AGAINST NATURAL RIGHTS. 

ner's salvation lo the slaveholder's worldly gains, or a 
violent attempt to shut up the way to eternal life, to pre- 
vent their entering, and depriving the slaves of all that 
consolation which is apt to be enjoyed in reading the word 
of God, together with that spiritual profit and advantage 
which Christians are apt to experience in hearing the gos- 
pel preached, so that slaveholders are neither entering the 
kingdom of heaven themselves, nor will they sufler others 
to enter in. 

AGAINST NATURAL RIGHTS. 

Sixthly — That practice must be unlawful which de- 
prives any part of the community, of the natural rights of 
citizens; but slaveholding is of that description. 

All men have a natural right to be citizens, and to en- 
joy civil protection in that nation or government where 
they have a permanent residence, except somelegril cause 
should prevent it, in which case such as may be exempt- 
ed, have a right of removal to some other part of the 
world ; bul in the case of slavery the slaves are deprived 
of both the rights of citizens, and a removal ^to any other 
part ofthe world, without anyjust reason forthelr prevention. 

All men, both citizens and foreigners, have a right to 
the protection of law in that nation where, in the course of 
providence their lot is cast, but the slaves have not the 
protection of law in slave slates, but are placed under the 
arbitrary power of their masters, and have no more pro- 
tection from the laws than horses or cattle, except so far 
as will serve the worldly interest of slaveholders. Hence 
it is, that in some slave states killing a slave is not in law 
murder of the first degree, whereas stealing one is a capi- 
tal crime. These unjust measures of necessity belong to 
the business of slaveholding, because no man can be ad- 
mitted to the protection of the civil law, without being ad- 
mitted to his oath or affirmation, but slaves cannot be ad- 
mitted to make oath for or against any person bt fore a 
court of justice without most dangerous consequences. 
As, 1st. They cannot be admitted to accuse their masters, 
as they might readily be suspected of prejudice and false 
accusation, for there is apt to subsist a deep rooted enmity 
in slaves against their masters. 2. The danger of being 



AGAINST RELATIVE DUTIES. 3l 

influenced by fear, in many instances, would justly deter 
them from being witnesses in behalf of their musters. 
3. Their <Tross ignorance of the nature of an oath, and of 
the consequences of a false testimony, prevents them from 
being capable of bearing witness for or against any per- 
son, so that slaves are so far from enjoying the rights of 
citizens, or even foreioners, that they are completely out- 
lawed. See laws of Kentucky, volume 2, from page 113 
to 128, in the appendix. 

AGAINST RELATIVE DUTIES. 

Seventhly — That practice must be wicked which tends to 
make void all those moral obligations to relative duties which 
God by his providence and the authority of his word has 
made binding. But slaveholding is of that description. 

The business of slaveholding deprives the slaves of 
their natural rights, which cannot be touched at, or affect- 
ed by, any legitimate civil authority to either grant or 
withhold, as the right of duty in husbands to wives, and 
the right of duty in wives to husbands; the right of pa- 
rental authority over children, and the right of duty in 
children to their parents. 

The question is not whether all masters do in every 
instance deprive their slaves of all these natural rights ; 
but whether they have a power according to the laws and 
regulations of slave states, to restrain them of these na- 
tural rights and privileges. That slave masters have all 
this power will not be called in question by any that are 
acquainted with the rules of slavery. If slaves retain 
these rights, so .as the master has no jurisdiction over 
them, they are not slaves. For example : If the father 
has an authority over his children, without the control of 
his master, to teach his children to read, it supposes he is 
not a slave in that respect, but is his own master. If the 
parents have authority to demand obedience from the 
children to their commands, in preference to the will of 
their masters, they are no slaves. If the children have a 
right and power to obey the commands of their parents, 
as superior to any other human authority, it supposes they 
are no slaves ; but all these relative obligations to duty, 
are reversed in the case of slavery. Therefore slave- 



J32 THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 

holding is of so heaven-daring a nature as to claim the 
power of dissolving the moral obligations of parents to 
their children, and those of children to their parents. 

That slaveholding destroys the moral obligations which 
arise from the conjugal relation, is manifest, because the 
business in its very nature supposes that any man has a 
right to purchase a slave whether married or single, and 
to remove him or her to any distance he may think fit ; 
and the holder of slaves may sell them, whether married 
or single. If the slave is married he may sell him to a 
merchant, who may remove him to such a distance as he 
may never see his partner more, which is done in thou- 
sands of instances. Thus slaveholding puts asunder those 
whom God has joined together, in direct contradiction to 
the express command of God. AVhom God hath joined 
together, let no man put asunder. 

The business of slaveholding: implies an unrestrained 
power to divide families which God's ordinance has joined 
together, and also united by the ties of natural affection 
and sympathy, so as never to see one another more, or to 
have it in their power to perform the relative duties which 
they, by the ties of nature and the law of God, owe one 
to another. 

From the evils now shewn forth as essentially connected 
with slavery, it may be proved that slaveholding is a 
breach of all the ten commandments. 

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 

Eighthly — Slaveholding is an express violation of the 
first commandment. , 

The man who holds a slave as his own property, as- 
sumes the place of God, because his authority comes in 
prior to the obligations of his law, so that he can restrain 
the slaves from all those duties, which the law of God re- 
quires of him, with which the civil law in no respect in- 
terferes, such as the times of worshiping God, the duty 
of taking times and using means to read his word, in order 
that he may be fit to discharge his duty to God. 

The first commandment requires us to know and ac 
knowledge God to be the only true God, and to worship 
and glorify him accordingly. But slaveholding of neces- 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 33 

sily prevents the slaves from the means of knowing God 
as the living and true God, and from the most perfect way 
of worshiping him. Ir. is no solid objection to this argu- 
ment, that some individuals do not altogether restrain their 
slaves from the means of knowledge ; for certain it is, 
that the business of involuntary, unmerited, hereditary 
slavery of necessity requires the means of knowledge to 
be withheld from the slaves; and it is a well known fact 
that the slaves in the United States of America and in the 
West Indies, are, with a very few exceptions, held in most 
brutish ignorance. Therefore, slaveholding is a most open 
and daring violation of the fir^t commandment. The 
slaveholder first usurps the place of God, and claims the 
first reverence. 

He prevents the slave as far as in his power from know- 
ing the true God, and from worshiping and glorifying 
him accordingly. His usurping the place of God, his 
injustice and cruelty, in preventing the slaves from know- 
ing the will of God, by reading his word, and from re. 
ceiving correct ideas of the way of salvation through Je- 
sus Christ, are not only the liigbpst afTront to the majesty 
of God, but they prove the greatest stumbling block in the 
way of the slaves to prevent their salvation. Their gross 
ignorance renders them incapable of distinguishing that 
real Christianity which flows from God through Jesus 
Christ, which produces love, joy, peace, long sufTering, 
gentleness, goodness, faith, temperance, meekness, and 
that which they experience in their tyrannical masters; 
and thence are liable to conclude that the Christian's God 
must be a tyrant, and that the whole scheme of Chris- 
tianity can be nothing but a system of error and cruelty. 
And we have good reason to believe that this very stum- 
bling block is the cause why so few are disposed to attend 
public worship, even where they are not prevented by the 
authority of masters. 

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 

Ninthly — That practice must be criminal which neces- 
sarily requires the breach of the second commandment. 
But slaveholding is of that description. 

The second commandment forbids the worshiping of 



g4 THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 

God by images or idols, or any other way not appointed 
in his word. But the slaveholder makes himself an idol 
to the slave, by contravening the authority of God's law 
relative to the slave ; so that he has no power to worship 
God in the practical use of his word and ordinances, nor 
power to command his own children or household, but 
through the permission of his master. If the slave vvor- 
ships God at all, or teaches his family, it must be by the 
sovereign will of his master^ who is his idol. 

A master who voluntarily assumes that power which 
contravenes the authority of God's law relative to the 
slave, treats God as an idol, and not the true God ; for it 
is impossible that the true God could grant any such priv- 
ilege to a creature. 

The second commandment requires the receiving, ob- 
serving, keeping pure and entire all such religious wor- 
ship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his word. 
But the slaveholder excludes the slave from the means of 
knowing the true God and his ordinances, and prevents 
the possibility of his keeping pure and entire such reli- 
gious worship and ordinances, as he has appointed in his 
word, by monopolizing all the slave's time to himself, with- 
out allowing him either leisure or means to know the will 
of God, or to render that worship and reverence to him 
which his word requires. Therefore slaveholding is a 
most flagrant breach of the second commandment. 

Slaveholding is a most formal example of sacrificing to 
an idol, or false god. The idol is Dives, the god of riches. 
The sacrifice is, the temporal and eternal happiness of the 
slaves. The ancient heathens offered human sacrifices 
to their gods, but it did not affect the eternal happiness of 
the victims ; but the' slaveholder sacrifices both the tem- 
poral and eternal happiness of the slaves, therefore his 
crime is as much worse than the practice of the heathen, 
as an eternal happiness is more valuable than a temporal. 

The method by which slaveholders sacrifice the eter- 
nal happiness of the slaves, is keeping them in a state of 
brutish ignorance, so as to be incapable of attaining to sal- 
vation in the ordinary way. God may, and, in many in- 
stances, does save sinners without reading, yet the ten- 
dency of slaveholding is to prevent their salvation. 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 35 

It can; ot be a valid objection to this reasoning, that a 
preventing the slaves from every branch of literature, and 
therewith family instruction, is only an abuse of slavery, 
because it is and has been shown to be essential to its 
permanent existence. A thing may be said to be abused 
when it is perverted lo an end entirely contrary to its na- 
tive tendency ; but for slaveholders to educate their slaves 
is an abuse of slavery, because it tends to bring about 
their emancipation, and put a final end to the practice ; 
but to keep the slaves in complete ignorance, is the surest 
method to keep them in bondage. 

Suppose the legislature of a slave state was to compel 
all the V aiders of slaves to have all their slaves taught to 
read auJ write, and oblige them to feed and clothe them 
well, it would not only prepare the slaves to emancipate 
themselves, but it would eventually compel the slavehold- 
ers to do it themselves. Considering the slow reluctance 
with which the slaves labor, together with the expenses of 
education, victualling, and clothing, agreeable to such a 
law, it would cause the expenses to be more than the pro- 
fits arising from their labor, and occasion a general eman- 
cipation ; for slaveholders can have no profits except that 
which arises from extortion, or the privations of education, 
victualling, and clothing. 

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 

Tenthly — That practice must be criminal which causes 
the breach of the third commandment. But slaveholding 
is of that description. 

The third com.mandment is, '' Thou shalt not take the 
name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not 
hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." 

This commandment implies a negative and a positive. 
The negative forbids the abuse and unnecessary use of 
the name of God : or withholding that honor and glory 
which his creatures owe to him. The positive lays an 
obligation upon all to use the name of God in a right, so- 
lemn, and seasonable manner ; as in religious worship, 
religious conversation, and in making oath before a court 
of justice. But slaveholding causes the breach of the third 
commandment both negatively and positively. As, 1st. 



36 THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 

The ignorance in which slaves are held, in order to secure 
their permanent subjection, is an occasion of most atro- 
cious profanity in tiie lives and conversations of slaves ; 
one ingredient of which is, that of taking the name of God 
in vain by profane swearing and cursing. 2. The neces- 
sity of keeping the slaves in a state of brutish ignorance, 
renders it impossible for them to either know the true 
name of God or his attributes, in order to worship him 
agreeable to his word, neither are they competent to make 
oath before any court. 

The practice of slaveholding is a breach of the sacra- 
mental covenant, which is implied in baptism and the 
Lord's supper ; in both of which persons are bound, with 
all the solemnity of an oath, to love their neighbors as 
them? Ives, and to do to all others whatsoever they would 
that t.ey should do to them. 

THE FOURTH COBIMANDMENT. 

Eleventh — That practice must be criminal which occa- 
sions the breach of the fourth commandment, which is, 
*' Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." But slave- 
hold uig is of that nature. 

The slave is amenable to no law but that of his master's 
will. If he chooses to obey the law of God for conscience' 
sake, rather than his master's will, he must be exposed 
to mo.st cruel persecution, so that the slave is liable to be 
compr^led to break the Sabbath. If he should refuse, he 
could lave no redress from the laws of the commonwealth, 
for a slave can have no protection from the laws of slave 
states ; such is the nature of slaveholding, that it excludes 
the slaves from the protection of the civil law, and places 
them entirely at the disposal of their masters, who have a 
desputicai authority over the persons and the behavior of 
their slaves, both of a spiritual and temporal nature. 
Though the civil law^ will not grant positive protection to 
a mast^^r in compelling his slaves to labor on the Sabbath, 
yet, as no cause can be supported before a court but by 
legal testimony, to which a slave is not competent, the 
master has an absolute power to compel the slave to labor 
on the Sabbath, or to violate any other precept of the mo- 
ra! law. 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 37 

The fourth commandment binds all heads of famihes 
to command all within their gates to keep the Sabbath j 
but facts bear witness that slaves, almost every Sabbath, 
are kept to labor, the females in i^itchens, and the males 
about the stables or other domestic labor. But when even 
works of necessity are all thrown over upon the slaves, it 
will for the most part employ them through the day ; but 
should works of necessity admit of some relaxation to tiie 
slaves, the constant roun 1 of visiting practised among 
slaveholders on the Sabbath will keep the slaves employed 
from morning to evening in serving them. Besides all 
this, many slaveholders compel their slaves to labor in 
the field on the Sabbath ; others, by withholding a scanty 
allowance of victualling, compel them to labor on the 
Sabbath for their support. 

The profound ignorance in which the slaves are held, 
of necessity occasions the breach of the Sabbath-day, be- 
cause the Sabbath cannot be kept holy to the Lord in any 
acceptable form, but by holiness in heart, life, and conver- 
sation ; and none that are ignorant of God's word, of his 
doctrines, his promises, or of the economy of grace and 
salvation, can keep the Sabbath holy to the Lord ; so that 
the breach of the Sabbath is a necessary consequence of 
slaveholding. 

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 

Twelfth — That practice must be criminal which occa- 
sions the breach of the fifth commandment, which is, 
" Honor thy father and thy mother." But slaveholding 
is of that description. 

The fifth commandment requires the duty of parents to 
children, and the duties of children to their parents. The 
chief of all parental duties is that of teaching children the 
knowledge of God's word, the doctrines of religion, and the 
way of salvation through Jesus Christ : Prov. xxii. 6. 
" Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he 
is old he will not depart from it :" Deut. vi. 4. " Hear, 

Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord ; and thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which 

1 command thee this day, shall be in thine heart ; and 

4 



38 THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 

thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children, and 
thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, 
and when thou walkest by the way. and when thou liest 
down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them 
for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets 
between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the 
posts of thy house, and on thy gates." But cruel slave- 
holding prevents family instruction. It necessarily pre- 
vents both parents and children from either knowing or 
fulfilling their reciprocal obligations to each other, by keep- 
ing them in a state of intellectual and moral darkness : 
and besides this, slaveholders, by cruel tyranny, prevent 
parents doing their duty to their children, agreeable to the 
fifth commandment, and children from obeying their pa- 
rents. This they do by usurping the headship and right- 
ful authority of the parents over their children, and the 
right of obedience in the children to the parents ; and thus 
make their own authority to be above that of the moral 
law, as it relates to the duties of parents to children, and 
those of children to their parents ; in all which it out- 
reaches the utmost stretch of civil power, which claims no 
authority over the private rights and private duties of the 
citizens ; so that a slaveholder is a tyrant, a cruel despot, 
in the most aggravated sense in which it can be under- 
stood. The grand point of difference between a govern- 
ment founded on equity, and one that is despotical, lies in 
one thing. The former is a power delegated to civil rulers 
from the people, which cannot interfere with the private 
rights or private relative duties of the people, which are 
incapable of being transferred to representatives ; but the 
latter, without the consent of the people, usurps a power 
over the community to command them at his pleasure, 
but rarely, in the administration of his power, meddles 
with the private rights and private duties of the citizens. 
The slaveholder ranks on a level with the worst of tyrants 
upon the globe, as to his usurpation of power ; but, in his 
administration of that power, he far exceeds the most 
cruel tyrant upon earth : so that slaveholding is so flagrant 
a breach of the fifth commandment, that the most super- 
ficial observer may be led to conviction who will apply 
his mind to the subject. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



Thirteenth — That practice must be criminal which 
implies a breach of the sixth commandment. But slave- 
holding is of that description. 

1st. Slavery is founded on violence, both in its origin 
and continuance, to which if the slave would not sub- 
mit, he would be liable to suffer death — that is to be 
beaten and abused, to compel him to submit to the cruel 
yoke, which, should he still refuse to comply with, would 
at length issue in his death ; for with slaveholders there 
is no medium between punishment and death, but sub- 
mission. Should the slave persist in refusing submission, 
he couid expect nothing but death. Therefore, slave- 
holding is founded upon and exists by murder ; and mur- 
der is essential to its existence. No one will deny that a 
robber on the highway is a murderer in the sight of God, 
who obtains his booty on condilion of saving life. 

2d. Should the slaves attempt to emancipate themselves 
by force, which every candid mind will grant would be 
morally right, according to the laws of slave states, death 
would be their portion ; so that murder is the foundation 
and support of slavery. But murder is not only theoreti- 
cally interwoven with slavery ; but it is practically ex- 
emplified ; so that there are few settlements, where slavery 
is practised, in which there is not a number of instances 
of slaves suffering death, that, in God's account, will be 
reputed murder, which are caused by either cruel beating, 
want of clothing, hunger, or hard labor. Besides, there 
have been numerous examples of their suffering death 
for making insurrections ; or for attempting- that which 
would be accounted heroic virtue iu their judges them- 
selves, were they in the same condition, in Algiers, Tunis. 
or Tripoli, 

3d. The crime of slaveholding may, by a very short 
process of reasoning, be shown to be much more aggra- 
vating than a common act of murder, as 

The sin of murder, in ordinary cases, is not restricted 
to the mere act of depriving the person of life, but 
it is depriving the innocent person of the enjoyments 
of life, and of an opportunity of improving the mind in 
such branches of religious and scientific knowledge, as 



40 THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 

would not only tend to increase his happiness, but to ren- 
der him useful to society. The great end of man's ere- 
ation, was that he should glorify God, promote his own 
happiness and that of others. His labor, his eating, drink- 
ing, and sleeping, are means only designed to subserve the 
other great ends. Suppose a family to be raised to man» 
hood, in a state of brutish ignorance, and live all their 
days without being taught any of those useful branches 
of knowledge which are requisite to fit mankind to glorify 
God, and qualify them for usefulness in society, and to 
appear in some degree respectable among mankind. 
They would there be rendered incapable of any enjoy- 
ment but sensual gratifications. The great moral end of 
their existence would then be lost, their persons degraded 
to the level of the brute creatures, while every person who 
enjoys the advantages of only a moderate education, 
would say that if he could be convinced that his children 
were all to be raised in the condition of slavct:, or in any 
condition in which the whole circle of their active life, 
their attainments and respectability in life, were to be 
nothing more than what is common to slaves, he would 
much rather they would all die in infancy. That such a 
choice would be lawful, is evident from EccL iv. 1 and 2. 
*' So I returned and considered all the oppressions that 
are done under the sun, and behold the tears of such as 
were oppressed, and they had no comforter. Therefore 
I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the 
living which are yet alive." Slaveholding is exactly that 
kind of crime, which not only deprives the slave of civil 
liberty, but also prevents him from answering the moral 
end of his existence by the acquisition of knowledge — 
hinders his usefulness to society, and keeps him from ever 
attaining to respectability amongst mankind, while he is 
degraded to a state of the utmost contempt and wretched, 
ness ; therefore slaveholders who keep their brethren of 
mankind in a state of bondage, and in that condition of 
ignorance which necessarily belongs to slaver}^ are guilty 
of a greater crime than if they would kill them all in in- 
fiincy. A common act of murder takes away the 
life, but it may not affect the eternal state of the sufferer. 
But the slaveholder destroys both soul and body for time 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 41 

and eternity, by rendering the slave useless for time, and 
unfit for the kingdom of heaven ; therefore it will be more 
tolerable for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, in the day of judg. 
ment, than for modern slaveholders. He slew the infants of 
Israel when born, and prevented them from the miseries 
of cruel bondage, but our slaveholders subject their slaves 
to a state of misery, ignorance, contempt and wretched- 
ness, which is much worse than to kill them in infancy, 
and in their last will entail the same hereditary cruelty 
upon their own posterity to the end of the world, and the 
same wretchedness upon the slaves and their posterity to 
the same period. 

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 

Fourteenth — Every practice must be criminal that 
causes a violation of the seventh commandment, which is, 
" Thou shalt not commit adultery." But slaveholding is of 
that description. 

Involuntary, unmerited, hereditary slavery, agreea- 
ble to the laws relative to slavery, supposes the slaves en- 
tirely in the power of their masters, to be sold and bought, 
to be transferred to new masters either in their own 
neighborhood, or at the distance of fifty, an hundred, or a 
thousand miles, according to the will of the seller and 
purchaser, which causes ihe slave to be separated from all 
his dear friends and relatives ; if he is married, it is put- 
ting asunder those whom God has joined together, and is 
a direct transgression of the seventh commandment, be- 
cause it is, Isi., A violent prevention of persons married 
from fulfilling the duties o!" marriage. 

2d. It c.iuses the persons thus separated to contract 
new marriages, and so to commit adultery. Matt. 5, 32, 
<' Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause 
of fornication, causefh her to commit adultery, and who- 
soever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adul- 
tery." The effect of slaveholding in this case is double 
adultery. — On the husband's side, 1. In a separa- 
tion from his lawful wife. 2. In his marriage to another 
woman. On his wile's side it is apt to ho the same, so 
that it issues in fourfold adultery — and this adultery is 
liable to be repeated every time the husband and wife are 
4* 



42 THE EIGHTH COBIMANDMENT. 

parted, by selling and transferring to new masters. No- 
thing is more common than for male slav«3S to have from 
one to five or six wives, and females to have as many- 
husbands, and all perhaps living at the same time. What- 
ever circumstances of alleviation m.ay be plead in such 
cases, on behalf of the slaves who are in a manner im- 
pelled to it, it bears proportionably heavy upon the slave- 
holders, who are the primary cause of all this complicated 
guilt. Therefore, slaveholding involves both masters and 
slaves in the most aggravated degrees of adultery ; and 
not only so, but it entails it upon all succeeding genera, 
tions. It cannot effect the validity of the above reason- 
ing, that some masters, when trafficking in their own 
species, make it a point not to sell a married slave, so as 
to be removed to any great distance, from his or her part- 
ner, this is indeed a small alleviation of the sin of adul- 
tery, necessarily attached to slaveholding ; yet the heaviest 
load of guilt still remains while they continue in social 
compact with slaveholding adulterers and voluntarily oc- 
cupy a station by v^hich they have power to go to the 
utmost length of criminality that others do, and as a fur- 
ther aggravation of their sin, they must be conscious that 
at their death, when houses, lands, horses, cattle, sheep 
and souls and bodies of men will be exposed to sale, or divid- 
ed amongst legatees, that their families will be liable to be 
scattered to tlie four winds ; so that such masters, ever 
so tender of their slaves, during their own natural life, 
while they leave this world without emancipating them, 
they are guilty of the horrid crime of entailing hereditary 
bondage upon them and their posterity forever, with all 
the hideous circumstances and aggravations of aduhery 
which necessarily belong to the practice. 

THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 

Fifteenth— Every practice must be criminal which 
implies a breach of the eighth commandment, which is, 
" Thou shall not steal." But slaveholding is a most di- 
rect violation of the eighth commandment. 

"The sins forbidden in the eighth commandment are 
theft, robbery, manstealing, and knowingly receiving any 
thing that is stolen* That slaveholding implies all these 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 43 

kinds of theft, will appear by analyzing the crime of theft, 
to discover wherein its principal point of criminality lies. 
Stealing, like many other crimes, implies a composition of 
acts and circumstances. But its chief criminaliiy is not con- 
fined to the mere act of taking another's property, which 
maybe lawfully done under peculiar circumstances. But 
the crime of theft consists in takingfromanother that which 
the moral law recognizes to him as his own, without his 
having forfeited it by either crime or debt. But the crime 
consists in two things. The first is taking from another 
what the law makes it his right to possess. The second is, 
the depriving the owner of the enjoyment of it. It comes 
to the same thing, whether a person actually takes that 
which is another man's right ; or wilfully holds in his 
possession what another has taken. The possession is 
not only a justification of the act of taking it from the 
owner, but it is that in which the chief point of criminality 
lies, because it is a preventing the owner from enjoying 
it. The moral law makes no difference between the first 
act of theft, and the wilful possession of an article 
stolen, either as to goods or persons, Exodus, xxi. 16. He 
that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in 
his hand, shall surely be put to death." 

If all men are naturally free who have not forfeited 
their right to freedom, or voluntarily transferred it to 
another, no one can deprive them of that freedom, or 
claim their involuntary service, but by the complicated 
crime of theft and robbery. There is a difference be- 
tween the right of freedom and the power of freedom. 
A man may, by his crimes, forfeit both the right of free- 
dom and the power of enjoyinir it, or he may sell his free- 
dom for life as it respects his labor. But he cannot trans- 
fer to another his right to perform the private duties of 
religion, nor the private relative duties which he owes to 
men. If then no man can transfer to another his own 
right to private relative duties, it would be still more un- 
reasonable to attempt to transfer the natural rights of 
another to a third person ; therefore it is impossible for 
any man or society of men to transfer the right of free- 
dom from the Africans, and equally impossible to trans, 
fer it from their children and their children's children to 
ail generations. 



44 THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT, 

The power of freedom may be taken away by force 
from parents and their children forever, but the right of 
freedom cannot be taken away from either parents or chil- 
dren. Should slaveholders insist that the right of freedom 
can be taken away without any criminal forfeiture, it may 
be asked by what law can it be taken away ? It cannot 
be taken away by the moral law, which forbids stealing, 
and says — In all things whatsoever you would that men 
should do unto you, do ye also to them. It cannot be by 
the authority of the civil law, for the civil law has no 
power to interfere with men's private rights to either 
tolerate the enjoyment of them or take them away. The 
people, the constituents of civil government, never trans- 
ferred or could transfer to their representatives a power 
over the private rights of men ; and certain it is that civil 
rulers can never give a legal power to others which they 
do not possess themselves. 

Therefore the right of freedom cannot be taken away, 
except in the case of a criminal forfeiture. And if it can- 
not be taken away by any lawful authority, it supposes 
that in the case of African slavery, the power of freedom 
is all that is taken away. The African slaves have a 
right to be free, but the power of enjoying it, is by vio- 
lence withheld from them, which supposes slaveholding to 
be downright theft and robbery. It is theft, as it is a 
most flagrant instance of fraud and robbery, as it is a di- 
rect instance of violence without the shadow of justice ; 
but it is an aggravation of the sin of robbery, far beyond 
any kind or degree of this species of crime which can 
come under our observation. As, 1st. If it is a crime 
deserving of corporeal punishment to steal part of a man's 
property, it must be a crime still greater to steal it all. 
2d. The crime in the first instance must be the same in 
degree to take away by fraud and violence all a man's 
property, or to take a man from all his property, the loss 
is the same to the owner ; but slaveholding takes a man 
from all his property, and absolutely prevents him from 
possessing more until the day of his death. Common 
robbery is apt to be a mere transient act, but this is per- 
petual while the sufTerer lives. Other cases of robbery 
or theft only deprive a man of his outward substance, but 
slaveholding robs the person of a man soul and body. 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 45 

As, 1st. It is robbing him of his God, so that he has no 
power either to read his word or to attend to the other 
duties of reliirion, but at the discretion of his master. 2d. 
It IS robbing him of all his relations and friends. It by- 
no means lessens the crime of manstcaling, that the pre- 
sent holders of slaves did not in their own persons lake 
them by violence from their own native land, but have 
obtained them by purchase or gift, because the crime of 
manstealing by no means derives its chief aggravation 
from the mere circumstance of removing persons from 
their native soil, which is but a small matter ; but it con- 
sists chiefly in robbing a man of his liberty, of his wages, 
his friends and relatives, and a depriving him of the 
right of relative duties both towards God and man. 

2d. No man can transfer to another a right to an article 
which he never legally possessed. The first man-thief 
had no right to deprive the Africans of liberty, wages, or 
the right of private relative duties, therefore could not 
transfer such a right to others ; so that the business of 
retaining them in bondage is a recognition of the first act 
of stealirig them. 

Every infant that is born of an African slave, is stolen 
from its parents ; which is as plain and direct an act of 
manstealing as the first. Considering then the true na- 
ture of slaveholding as it deprives a man of all his natural 
rights during life, and taking into view the dignity of hu- 
man nature, or high rank of man in the scale of created 
existence, compared with the most noble of the brute cre- 
ation, it may be safely concluded that the crime of slave- 
holding is a degree of theft as much more aggravating 
than horse stealing, as a man is better than a horse. A 
horse is of no intrinsic value in creation, but as it is made 
subservient to man's benefit. But a man's value in the 
scale of being must be estimated by his relation to God, as 
a subject of his law, and by his eternal existence. 1st. If 
we take a view of man in his relation to God, we will find he 
is of more value than a whole universe of brute creatures, 
together with the whole inanimate creation. The earth, 
sun, moon and stars, with all the different tribes of brute 
animals were all made to subserve the good of man, that 
is to be instruments and means to preserve him, and to 
afford him motives to glorify God, and to prepare for etcr- 



46 THE EIGHTH COMBIANDMENT, 

nal happiness ; therefore a man is of naore value than the 
sun, moon, earth, stars, and all the brute creation ; because 
every thing which is made to subserve the interest of an- 
other, supposes that other being or object to be in value 
above that which is only made to subserve its advantage ; 
so that to steal a man, or hold a slave, which is the same 
thing, is as much more criminal in the sight of God than 
the crime of stealing a horse, as all the horses in the world, 
all the brute creation, the globe of the earth, the sun, 
moon, and stars, are in value above the price of one horse. 
If the value of a man was to be estimated by his mere tem- 
poral existence, and his enjoyment of sensual gratifica- 
tions, it would not far transcend the value of a horse ; but 
when we consider that the moral end of his creation was 
to glorify God and enjoy him forever — that he must spend 
eternal ages in a state of either happiness or misery, the 
event of which is to rest upon his improvement of time in 
this world, his value must be estimated by his moral 
worth ; that is by the value of that tribute of praise which 
he owes to God, and the value of his eternal happiness. 
Compared with his eternal misery, if the crime of slave- 
holding only deprived a man of mere earthly enjoym.ents, 
its degree of criminality might be calculated by comparing 
his privations with the damage sustained by the stealing of 
a horse, — but when we consider that slaveholding neces- 
sarily deprives the slave not only of his independent right 
of earthly privileges, but also of the indefeasible right of 
glorifying God, of using the means of salvation, and of 
improving those means in preparation for eternal life, then 
the comparison lies between the mere felonious act of de- 
priving a man of his horse, and robbing- God of that tri- 
bute of praise which the slave owes to him, and a slave of 
that happiness in heaven which he has a right to seek af- 
ter, by reading, meditation and prayer. 

The business of slaveholding is not only a continuance 
of theft and robbery during the natural life of the slave- 
holder, but it is an entailment of the same crime upon all 
his posterity after him, or charter given them to continue 
the practice to the end of the world, together with an ex- 
posure of himself and them to the vengeance of hell fire 
forever, and this complicated crime with all its aggrava- 
ions and horrid consequences, is augmented in proportion 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 4? 

to the number of slaves held in unjust bondage. It cannot 
alleviate the aggravation of the crime, that God may, as a 
God of sovereign mercy, save whom he will of the slaves, 
though they should be deprived of the ordinary means of 
salvation, because slavery, with its necessary appendages, 
has a direct tendency to prevent the salvation of its sub- 
jects. The whole force of the above reasoning depends 
on two things. The one is, whether the great moral end 
of man's existence was to glorify God and enjoy him for- 
ever. The other is, whether slavery tends to prevent or 
supersede that great end. That the great end of man's ex- 
istence was to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, will 
hardly be denied by any one who believes in a future exist- 
ence. That slaveholding has a direct tendency to prevent 
the slaves from fulfilling this two-fold end of their creation, 
and of exposing them to the vengeance of God for their 
sins, will be manifest from two reasons. The first is, that 
a state of profound ignorance of every branch of learning 
is a necessary appendage of slavery, without which it can- 
not be continued in any nation. The second is, that the 
authority of the master contravenes the law of God and 
the gospel of Christ relative to the slave, so that he cannot 
make use of the means of grace in order to reach the 
moral end of his existence, but at the discretion of his 
master. If, then, the fact of holding one man in a state of 
bondage and profound ignorance has a tendency to prevent 
him from answering the great end of his existence, and 
thence exposing him to eternal vengeance for his sin, 
what idea will it give of the crime of hereditary slavery, 
which entails the same evils upon the posterity of the 
slaves to perpetual generations. Lastly. The enjoyment 
of God forever is of infinite value to the creature ; so that 
man's eternal existence, in connection with the tv/o-fold 
end of his creation, gives the most perfect idea of the value 
of a man ; which is amplified by the infinite loss he 
must sustain should he fall short of attaining the great 
end. 

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 

Sixteenth — That practice must be criminal which im- 
plies a violation of the ninth commandment, which is, 



48 THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 

" Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." 
But slaveholding is of that description. 

1st. Slaveholding implies an assertion and plain decla- 
ration, that the master has a lawful right to take the slave's 
labor without wages, which is a bearing witness in direct 
contradiction to the word of God. Jeremiah xxii. 13 : " Woe 
unto him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, 
and giveth him nought for his work." 

2d. It is bearing false witness against the slave, whose 
conscience testifies to him that he ought to be free, and to 
have wages for his labor. 

3d. The ninth commandment requires the maintaining 
and promoting of truth between man and man. But 
slaveholding of necessity prevents the slaves from bearing 
testimony before any court in their own defence, or in 
the cause of any other person, to either clear the innocent 
or condemn the guilty. 

4th. The law of God, revealed in his word and in the 
book of nature, declares that every one who is not a dis- 
turber of the peace of society, ought without interruption 
to enjoy the right of acquiring knowledge, and the right 
of all private relative duties. But the power of the slave- 
holder denies to the slave any of these privileges except 
they enjoy them through their magisterial indulgence. 
Therefore slaveholding is a bearing false witness against 
all these precepts of the divine law, which bind all men to 
the performance of all private relative duties, and against 
the voice of nature, which teaches that all men have a 
right to fulfil all relative duties which natively flow from 
the natural relations in which they stand to one another. 

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 

Seventeenth — That practice must be criminal which 
implies a breach of the tenth commandment. But slavery 
is of that description. 

The tenth commandment is, " Thou shalt not covet." 
It requires full contentment with our own condition, with a 
charitable frame of spirit towards our neighbor and all 
that is his, and forbids all inordinate emotions and affec- 
tions to anything that is his. But slaveholding implies 
discontentment with our own condition, and a want of that 



THE RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO THE WORLD. 40 

charity which esteems another's good as well as our own, 
is contrary to ihat second great commandment — " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Slaveholding is a 
sacrificing another's interest to our ovVn, and is a violation 
of the tenth commandment of the highest aggravation. 
Other acts of this sin may be of a partial nature, and may 
respect some things only ; but this is a degree of covet- 
ousness which, as a sweeping rain, takes all. Person, 
liberty, property and privileges, both spiritual and tempo- 
ral ; we use the word property for labor, because the 
poor man's labor is his property as much as houses, lands, 
and goods, are the property of a rich man. Houses, lands, 
and goods, are of value to a man, not because of the ma- 
teriais which constitute these articles, but because of the 
profits which he derives from their use. So the poor 
man's labor is of use to him, not so much on account of 
the labor itself, as from the profits arising from it ; so that 
for one man to deprive another of liberty, and by force 
exact his labor without a due compensation, is the highest 
degree of covetousness, the grossest kind of theft and 
robbery ; and a real slaveholder ought to be viewed with 
the same abhorrence, and treated with the same contempt 
as the most atrocious thief, robber, or buccanier, that ever 
infested sea or land, or disgraced human nature. 

THE RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO THE WORLD. 

Eighteenth — The criminality of slaveholding may be 
proved from a prior right which all the sons and daughters 
of Adam have to enjoy this world and the goodness of 
providence, which right arises from that original grant 
which God gave to man in his creation of this world. 
Genesis i. 28 : " And God blessed them and said unto 
them. Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth, 
and subdue it : and have dominion over the fish of the 
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living 
thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, 
I have given every herb bearing seed, which is upon the 
face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit 
of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for meat." 

This appears to be the grand charter upon which the 
right of all property is founded. And if this grant or 
5 



50 THE RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO THE WORLD. 

charter be admitted as reasonable and just, it will follow 
as a proper conclusion that every claim set up amongst 
mankind, which contradicts this grant, or prevents any 
part of mankind from enjoying it, must be sinful, because 
at open war with that original charter. But slaveholding 
is exactly of this description of crime. As, 

1st. It deprives the slaves of the right of being fruitful, 
multiplying and replenishing the earth, in a lawful way, 
by separating husbands and wives, dividing and scattering 
their families. 

2d. It cuts them off from having dominion over the 
fishes of the sea, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the 
field. So that they have no power over these creatures, 
nor privilege to enjoy them, but at the discretion of their 
ungodly masters. Slaveholding is an usurpation of that 
great original charter from God, of all the gifts of provi- 
dence to all mankind, or a monopoly of the whole to the 
slaveholders themselves, and a robbing those that are sub- 
ject to their despotical power of their lawful rights. The 
crime of robbery is the same, whether a man's property is 
taken from him, or the man is taken from his propertyc 
In the case of slavery men are taken from their property, 
viz., the gifts of God, which they have a right to possess 
and enjoy ; these are by arbitrary power withheld from 
them, and enjoyed by their tyrants 

Again. In that great charter, God gave a grant of the 
whole face of the earth to all mankind, to be possessed and 
enjoyed; but slavery completely robs a great part of man- 
kind of this right. It shuts them out from possessing or 
obtaining any part of the earth which God gave to all 
mankind, but this is not an insinuation that those parts of 
the earth or tracts of land, which have, by legal negotiation, 
become the private property of individuals, should be dis- 
tributed gratis to those that have none ; but it means that 
all men, in virtue of that original grant, have a moral 
right to possess property of their own by such ways as the 
moral law and the civil authority sanctions, and that 
slavery completely cuts off the slave from that privilege. 
But the horrid criminality of this species of robbery, is 
aggravated from the vast abundance of lands on the face 
of the earth, which yet remain uncultivated, the fertility 



AGAINST MERCY TO THE POOR. 51 

of which is an invitation to all mankind to extend their 
settlements, replenish the earth and subdue it ; and what 
heightens the injustice and cruelly still more, is, that in our 
western states in particular, the I'c are opportunities of pos- 
sessing lands of the first quality at an easy rate, and there- 
by securing property for themselves and their offspring. 
But cruel slavery has so shut the doors of moral justice as 
to exclude a great part of the inhabitants of our land, from 
their due proportion of the gifts of God, and of their 
other equitable rights, and from their children after them 
for ever. Slaveholding is the complicated crime of avarice 
and robbery. Avarice, in monopolizing the land and other 
property of our neighbors, and robbery in doing it by 
violence, without the shadow of justice. Isaiah v. 8 : 
" Woe to them that join house to house, and lay field to 
field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone 
in the midst of the earth." Micah ii. 2 : " And they 
covet fields and take them by violence ; and houses, and 
take them away : so they oppress a man and his house, 
even a man and his heritage." 

AGAINST MERCY TO THE POOR. 

Nineteenth — That practice must be criminal that super- 
sedes and necessarily excludes the duty of shewing mercy 
to the poor. But slaveholding is of that description. 

The Scripture makes it the indispensable duly of all, 
according to their abilities, to help the poor. Proverbs xiv. 
21 : "He that hath mercy on the poor, happy i.? he." 
Verse 31 : "He that honoreth his Maker hath mercy on 
the poor." Chap. xix. 17 : "He that hath pity on the poor 
lendeth to the Lord." That pity to the poor implies more 
than an inward commisseration for their distress, accom- 
panied with mere verbal expressions of compassion, the 
apostle James has shewn, chap. ii. 15 : "If a brother or a 
sister be naked, or destitute of^ daily food, and one of you 
say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, 
notwithstanding ye give them not these things which are 
needful for the body, what doth it profit ?" Isaiah Iviii. 
6 : "Is not this the fast that I have chosen to loose the 
bands of wickedness^ to undo the heavy burdens, and to let 
the oppressed go free ; and to break every yoke, to deal 
thy bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are 



52 AGAINST MERCY TO THE POOR. 

cast into thine house, when thou seest the wicked, that 
thou cover him ?" These scriptures, with innumerable 
other texts, lay all men under strong obligations to help 
the poor, according to their abilities ; but there is no class 
of poor so divested of every natural enjoyment as the 
slaves. And that which renders their case the more wor- 
thy of compassion is, that their extreme poverty will not 
adm.it of the common pretext for withholding acts of 
charity to the needy, which is, that their poverty has been 
occasioned by the^r own bad economy, but, on the con- 
trary, it is entirely occasioned by unjust laws and arbitrary 
power. If, then, slaveholders are justifiable in keeping 
their neighbors in a state of the most abject, unmerited 
poverty, and thus withhold help from the poorest and most 
innocent of all poor, by retaining them in bondage, they 
can be under no obligations, by the law of God, to help the 
less poor and less innocent. And if slaveholders are ex- 
empted by the law of God from helping the poor in their 
distress, all others must be equally exempted ; for one 
moral law equally binds all men. Therefore if slavehold- 
ing is lawful, it will forbid all acts of charity to the poor. 

Again. The indigence of the poor is liable to be of 
a twofold nature. It may consist of either a want of 
worldly substance, or of a mental want, or both. A state 
of slavery gives a complete example of both, which loudly 
calls for the charity of all to whom God has given the 
means of assistance. The want of the mind is the great- 
est of all wants, because it affects the eternal state of its sub- 
jects ; for none that are come to the years of understand- 
ing can be saved from the wrath to come, but through a 
knowledge of the gospel ; therefore, to help the poor and 
needy heathen in different parts of the world, whose great- 
est poverty is a want of the knowledge of Christ, claims 
the attention of the enlightened and wealthy citizens of 
our country more than the poor in worldly substance. 
But if it is a duty in slaveholders not only to keep the 
blacks in their own country in a state of involuntary 
bondage, and in order to subserve that purpose to keep 
them in the most profound heathen darkness, it cannot be 
a duty for the same people to be at the expense to have 
the gospel sent to enlighten the heathen in distant parts of 
the world. Yea, it appears an insult to the understand-^ 



OPPOSED TO KEPUBLICANISM. 53 

ings of slaveholders, for missionary societies to ask their 
gratuity for any such purpose. And it is most evident 
that this very absurdity is the reason why so many in 
the state of Kentucky, professing Christianity, are avowed 
enemies to the great work of sending the gospel to the 
heathen in Asia and Africa. 

OPPOSED TO REPUBLICANISM. 

Twentieth — That practice must be inconsistent with 
moral justice which is opposed to republican principles ; 
but slaveholding is of that description. Therefore, slave- 
holding is the highest degree of despotism. 

If despotical government is lawful over ten persons, it 
is equally lawful over one hundred, one thousand, a mil- 
lion, or ten million. But if it is taken for granted that a 
republican government is just, it is impossible that a 
despotical one can be just. Therefore slaveholding must 
be inconsistent with justice, and contradictory to the fun- 
damental principles of our government, which recognize 
all men as having a natural right to freedom ; and exam- 
ples show that despotism is incompatible with the very ex- 
istence of a republican government, every instance of 
which has ever been supported in opposition to despotical 
power, and none more so than the Federal Government of 
the United States of America. The revolution was com- 
menced and established on equal rights and liberties, 
which were invaded by British authority. (See the De- 
claration of Independence.) That all men are by nature 
free and independent ; so that it is impossible to vindicate 
the practice of slavery without condemning the political 
government of our nation, nor without vindicating every 
species and every degree of tyranny exemplified in the 
world, and at the same time will throw odium upon the 
authors of our revolutionary independence, and brand the 
names of a Franklin, a Washington, a Jay, an Adams, 
and a Hancock, together with all the most eminent instru- 
m.ents of the revolution, with the opprobrious names of 
robbers and murderers, who unjustly and cruelly wrench- 
ed from the crown of Britain its just right at the expense 
of many thousand lives. That this conclusion is just, will 
be further evident from a recapitulation of the character 
of a slaveholder. 

5* 



54 HURTFUL TO MASTERS AND SLAVES. 

1. A slaveholder is one who claims an absolute right 
of property in the persons of such as the laws of the 
commonwealth recognize to him as his slaves. 

2. He has authority to compel them, as his subjects, 
unconditionally to obey his comm.ands, to sell or give 
them to whom he will — 1o go, to come, to compel them to 
marry or forbear — to separate when married at his plea- 
sure ; to have the whole disposal of the eating, drinking, 
sleeping, wear and labor of the slaves, and to beat them 
at his will, without being hindered from the exercise of 
any or all these branches of power by the laws of his 
country. His whole power, examined by an impartial 
eye, and compared with that of the most despotical gov- 
ernment on earth, will be found to be many degrees worse ; 
so that, with all the boasted liberty of our government, it 
is, in relation to some millions of the inhabitants, more 
cruel and despotical than any on the globe, except such as 
admit the same kind of slavery. 

HURTFUL TO MASTERS AND SLAVES. 

Tweniy-Jirsi — Slaveholding must be sinful, if in its 
effects and necessary consequences it is hurtful to both 
masters and slaves ; but slaveholding, if duly considered, 
will be found to be ruinous to both. 

1. That policy must be best which tends to unite the 
inhabitants of the land, to attach them in the closest hab- 
its of love and friendship. But slaveholding has a con- 
trary effect ; for the present policy respecting slavery is 
calculated to fix eternal discord between the slaves and 
their masters, and it cannot be otherwise, except it were 
possible to turn the course of human nature ; because their 
interests are diametrically opposite. Slavery, with all its 
mortifying degradations, cannot divest men of the image 
of God, of the sensations and powers it has pleased his 
kind benefactor to endow him with. Deprived of his 
birth-right freedom, he still sees, hears, feels, tastes and 
smells ; and above all, thinks, reasons, reflects, and draws 
conclusions, independent of all the tyrants on earth. And 
it is a well known fact, that from the commencement of 
American independence, slaves, by hearing the conver- 
sations of their masters upon civil liberty, are better ac- 



HURTFUL TO MASTERS AND SLAVES. 55 

quainted wilh the rights of man than they could have been 
before that period, the effect of which is an increase of 
enmity between masters and their slaves, which must lead 
to some tremendous irruption in the slave states, when 
the slaves will emancipate themselves, and vindicate their 
rights by taking the reins of government into their own 
hands, as has been exemplified in St. Domingo. That 
this must be the final result, may be concluded from the 
small increase of the free population in slave states, com- 
pared with that of the slaves. The ease, dissipation and 
luxury of slaveholders are great enemies to the increase 
of population in slave states ; but that temperance which 
slavery necessarily causes to its subjects, occasions the 
increase of the slave population to double that of the 
free; which must eventually so far preponderate as to in- 
vert the present order of things. 

2. Slavery has a most baneful effect upon the bodies of 
slaveholders, which is manifest at the present day. The 
most superficial observer may see that the bodies of the 
white inhabitants, when compared with the muscular 
strength and robust constitution of the blacks, are weak, 
puny and sickly ; and this declension with the whites is 
descending still lower every generation. But what is 
still worse, ease, luxury, and a constant round of dissipa- 
tion, which are causes of these pernicious effects upon the 
bodies of slaveholders, equally affect their minds, by occa- 
sioning intemperance, covetousness, idleness, effeminacy^ 
pride, hardheartedness, and opportunity of secret fornica- 
tion and adultery, and a preventing of lawful marriage. 
The causes of the evil effects now pointed out, are equally 
ruinous to every branch of useful learning ; so that ladies 
and gentlemen, notwithstanding their exemption from 
labor, are more prone to indulge themselves in empty 
parade, with an ostentatious display of their independence 
and authority over their degraded vassals, than to make 
proficiency in book learning.* 

* It is nothinjr uncommon for a young lady, when passing her 
leisure hours with insignificant ease in a parlor, whose brain is as 
scanty of ideas as the pith of a buckeye, to cry to some of the 
kitchen slaves with a voice resembling tlie long yelp of a half- 
grown pullet, <' Mohelee, come pick up my scissors ;" or " come 
reach me my boss ;" which she might recover herself, with little 
more exertion than reaching out her hand. 



56 INJURIOUS TO THE SLAVES. 

3. Slaveholding has a most .pernicious effect on the 
families of slaveholders; they are raised in idleness, van- 
ity and pride, and in utter unfitness to acquire a livelihood 
by manual labor ; which, when suceeded by a change of 
fortune from wealth to poverty, renders their condition 
most deplorable. The case would be quite different, if, 
with the privilege of holding slaves, the legislative autho- 
rities of slave states had systematized their tyrannical 
codes, by entailing the estates of slaveholders, to prevent 
their being executed for the discharge of debts ; but as 
the case now stands, when there are so many vicissitudes 
of fortune, and changes from affluence to poverty, these 
direful effects are not only common, but may be still ex- 
pected where slavery prevails. 

4. Slaveholding has a tendency to introduce disorder 
into families, by proving a temptation to masters and their 
sons, living in idleness, (either by flattery or force,) to 
make undue encroachments on the chastity of their fe- 
male slaves, the offspring of which is a mixed blood, 
which causes discontentment to the lawful partner of the 
husband's bed, and shame and vexation to his legitimate 
children. The frequency of these abominable practices 
in every slave neighborhood, shows that it is a necessary 
consequence of slavery. 

5. It tends to destroy natural affection, and even to 
brutalize the feelings of human nature. In virtue of the 
laws of slave states, all children born of female slaves are 
devoted to perpetual hereditary slavery ; in consequence 
of which, it is no uncommon thing for fathers to sell their 
own children, to be slaves to perpetual generations, to be 
subject to the whole system of misery which belongs to a 
state of slavery. It is true, that for a man to sell the 
children of another is in some respects worse than to sell 
his own, yet there are circumstances of peculiar horror 
belonging to each of them, that are not in the same sense 
as applicable to both. To sell the children of another 
person appears the most devilish, because in that case the 
seller has no moral right of property in the child that he 
violently wrenches from the parents, but in the latter case 
the father has a right of property in his own child at least, 
until it arrives unto the age of twenty-one. Therefore, 
in the case of a man selling his own children for slaves, 



INJURIOUS TO THE SLATES. 57 

he acts the most brutish ; but the man who sells the 
children of another, acts the most devilish. 

6. The evil of slavery is made manifest by the poverty 
of slave states, compared with the free. Most of travel- 
ers who have been at pains to compare them, agree that 
the southern states are at least a century behind the east- 
ern in point of improvement. The reason of this differ- 
ence can be nothing else than that a large proportion of 
the inhabitants in the southern states are maintained in 
idleness ; whereas, in the free states, the great majority of 
the inhabitants are employed in lawful industry. 

The evil effects of slavery upon the slaves themselves 
are, 

1. Gross ignorance of the way of salvation through 
Jesus Christ. Deprived of the sweetness and comfort 
enjoyed by reading the word of God, and living without 
any well-grounded hope of eternal life, they are liable to 
die in despair, or else in a state of brutish stupidity. 

2. They are deprived of comfort with their families, 
which are liable to be sold, and dispersed so as perhaps 
never to see each other more. 

3. Perpetual celibacy, or unavoidable adultery, very 
often necessitous theft, lying, low cunning, dirtiness, in- 
decency, fornication. We shall conclude the illustration 
of this part of the subject, with a citation from a late pub- 
lication on the subject of slavery, by a traveling preacher 
of the Methodist Church. 

" Their situation generally is as follows : — The families 
are miserably crowded together in dirty pens, without any 
real family comfort. 

"A slave has not power to do those duties which are 
incumbent on him towards his family, nor the satisfaction 
of being with them in sickness and distress. They are 
deprived of the liberty of seeking God and their soul's 
salvation, in many instances. In a word, slavery is in- 
sufferable in its nature. A slave is looked upon as the 
property of his master, who is his own legislator, as touch- 
ing the slave, to usurp, abuse, drive rigorously, sell, change, 
give, and yea, beat without restriction, and brand as he 
would his horses ; and even when the life itself is taken 
away, it is but little regarded. Perhaps there may be a 
small stir if one is murdered, but it is nothing but a sham 



68 INJURIOUS TO THE SLAVES. 

inquisition. His wife and children are all saleable pro- 
perty ; so that the slave cannot even say his life is his 
own. They see their wives and children in suffering cir- 
cumstances, but have no way to relieve them. They 
see their bleeding backs, but dare not say, Why is this 
abuse ? They are torn from each other to satisfy debts, 
and to be parted among favored legatees. This is tole- 
rated by the sons of liberty, who risked their lives to de- 
liver themselves from political bondage ; yet the worst of 
slavery is tolerated, with all its train of inhuman conse- 
quences. But where shall I turn mine eyes from seeing 
of evil, or mine ears frofh hearing of blood 1 The sor- 
rows of mine heart are enlarged by -hearing, and mine 
eyes affect my soul in beholding the sorrowful scenes that 
have lately fallen within my province. 

" On the Lord's day, in the evening, as I was walking 
and meditating, I saw a man slave sitting alone with a 
book in his hand, who appeared to be in deep distress. 
I drew near to him, and asked the cause of his trouble. 
With a deep sigh he gave me the substance of the follow- 
ing relation : — 

*' 'My dear wife and all her children are removed far 
from me toward the south, and I shall see them no more ; 
and what has augmented my pain, is a verbal message 
from her to love her till I die, as she would me ; and 
that she would never have another man. Formerly I 
was much engaged for the salvation of my soul; but now 
I think I shall be overcome so as to destroy both body 
and soul together.' 

" A woman slave in Charlotte county, Virginia, whose 
husband was removed to Georgia, so regretted her loss 
that, had it not been for the kind providence of the Almigh- 
ty, through the activity of her young mistress, she would 
have ended her wretched life with a halter. 

*' A poor slave a few months past lost his wife and child- 
ren, who were sold as so many cattle to discharge a debt. 
He pined away to a mere skeleton, and gave up the 
ghost. 

'* I saw a slave near New River, who was lamenting the 
loss of his wife and seven children, who were then on 
their way to South Carolina, his grief appeared to me to 



CAUSES THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD. 59 

be intolerable, too heavy to be borne without divine assis- 
tance, which I trust he had. In addition to his griev- 
ance was a message he had received of her sorrow on the 
road ; that it was so frreat that they were obhged to carry 
her in the wagon. Now reader, put thy soul (only by re- 
flection) in his soul's place, and try the enormous weight. 
" A few days ago an unlucky slave who returned home 
rather later than his time, was met by an upstart over- 
seer, and killed upon the path, as every concurring cir- 
cumstance declared. 

•" Even where the husband and wife dwell together, their 
conception and birth, too commonly, are not so private as 
the brutes in the forest." 

BRINGS NATIONAL JUDGMENTS. 

Twenty -second — The evil of slavery may be evinced 
from the judgments of God upon our nation. National 
sins are punished by national judgments. Our nation, 
though not in every section equally guilty of the sin of 
slaveholding, yet, as a body politic, it is as a nation im- 
plicated in the guilt. 1st. Because many throughout all 
the states are friendly to slavery, and many representa- 
tives from the free states are advocates for extending 
slavery to new organized states ; while some of those who 
are inimical to slavery, do not show a degree of zeal 
worthy of the magnitude of the cause in opposing the 
measures of the Federal Government. At those times 
when congress are ensfaged in extending slavery to new 
states ; so that our nation, in her public character, is guilty. 
Nations will not be punished in their national cnpacity in 
the world to come. Therefore, national sins must be 
punished by national judgments in this world. That our 
nation is visited of late years by national judgments, is 
manifest from the produce of the earth being destroyed 
by insects, by excessive drought and by severe and un- 
seasonable frost. But the most remarkable national ca- 
lamity is that of pestilence, in both town and country. That 
this last plague is a display of the divine displeasure, for 
the enormous guilt of slavery, is evident from its being al- 
most entirely restricted to the white population, while 
the blacks are in a great measure exempted from the 



60 AT WAR WITH THE CHURCH, 

common calamity. This marked difference in the prov- 
idence of God between the white population and the 
blacks, who are no part of the nation, as a political body, 
is exactly similar to the distinction, that divine provi- 
dence made between Israel and the Egyptians in the time 
of the ten plagues. Exodus, 7th chapter to the 12th: If 
we consider mankind in their private stations and rela- 
tions to one another, we may say with Solomon, in that 
case, Eccl. ix. 1,2, that, generally speaking, "no man 
knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them, 
but one event happeneth to all;" but the reason why one 
event happens to mankind in their individual capacities, is 
because it is the will of God, that sentence should not be 
speedily executed, against an evil work, but that it should 
be reserved unto the general judgment, yet national sins 
are not reserved to the general judgment, because nations 
cannot then be punished in their national capacities, but 
have always been, both in ancient and modern times, pun- 
ished in this world by national judgments. It can be no 
just objection to this view of the subject, that natural caus- 
es may be assigned for the marked difference of the ef- 
fects produced by the pestilence upon the black and white 
population, such as that the constitutions of the former are 
better adapted to the climate than the latter, because we 
find by experience that in all climates on our continent, 
the same difference has been manifested, which shows 
that the first cause is of the moral kind, and that it is the 
national crime of slaveholding unrepented of and persist- 
ed in. 

AT WAR WITH THE CHURCH. 

Twenty-third — If the government of slaves and that 
of the church are at open war with one another, slavehold- 
ing must be wrong : but the government of slaves is at 
open war with the government of the church ; there- 
fore slaveholding must be wrong. 

The government of the church takes cognizance of 
fraud and theft, such as defrauding the hireling of his wa- 
ges ; wages due to a person, always supposes a covenant 
or agreement between the hireling and ihe employer ; the 
ground upon which the employer is bound to pay wages 



AT WAR WITH THE CHURCH. 61 

to the hireling is not the covenant or agreement, but it is 
the condition upon which the employer bound himself to 
pay wages, that is, work done. If work done is the mor- 
al ground upon which wages are due to an hireling, wa- 
ges must be equally due to the laborer if he does it by 
compulsion, as when he does it by consent. The crime, then, 
of defrauding the laborer of his stipulated wages, can be 
no greater than to take the labor of a slave without wa- 
ges : yea, it is of less aggravation. The first is an act of 
theft, the last is an act of double robbery 

1st. Robbing him of his liberty and then of his labor, 
which is his property. If, then, the government of the 
church takes cognizance of fraud and theft inordinary 
cases, it must of acts of robbery. And if an ecclesiastic, 
al court may excommunicate a person for feloniously tak- 
ing a part of a man's estate, how much rather if he should 
take it all ; and every slaveholder, who by force takes 
away the liberty of his slave, and his labor without wages, 
must be the worst of all robbers; as he by violence takes 
soul, body, liberty, property, and all those rights of duty 
which the slave owes to both God and man. Therefore, 
the just and equitable government of the church is di- 
rectly opposed to the government of slaves ; and a real 
slaveholder can have no more right in the sight of God, 
or in the eye of the church, to church membership, than 
the worst of swindlers, thieves, or robbers. 

2d. When slaveholders and their slaves are both ad- 
mitted members of the same church, the government of the 
church must be at open war with the slaveholder's govern- 
ment of his slaves. 

If the slave accuses his master to the church for a 
crime, in support of which he can bring no testimony but 
that of slaves, how is he to support his charge, when nei- 
ther he nor his witnesses can be admitted to make oath 
before any court. If he is admitted and his slave witnesses, 
all slaves may be admitted the same way. It has been 
before shewn that slaves neither are or can be admitted 
by any court to bear testimony for or against any person, 
an such cases the government of the church and that of 
the slaves are at open variance 

3d. If the master, who is in the same communion with 
6 



62 AT WAR WITH THE CHURCH. 

his slave, is offended at him, the laws and governnnenl 
relative to slaves, authorise the nnaster to beat him ; but 
the laws and government of the church forbid one brother 
to strike another under pain of church censure, while the 
rule of duty is so plainly expressed, that none need mis- 
take it. Matthew xviii. 15 : " Moreover, if thy brother 
trespass against thee, go and tell him of his fault between 
thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained 
thy brother ; but if he will not hear thee, then take with 
thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three 
witnesses^very word may be established ; and if he shall 
neglect to hear them, tell it to the church ; but if he neg- 
lect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen 
man and a publican." As this rule gives him no authority 
to take satisfaction by beating his offending brother, but 
directs him to take opposite measures, it is impossible then 
to carry the government of the church into execution agree- 
able to the scripture, without combating the government 
of slaves. 

Suppose the government of the church to prohibit slave- 
masters to strike or abuse their slaves that are in the same 
communion with themselves? It will amount to an eman- 
cipation of the slaves ; for no one can be a slaveholder 
without possessing authority to compel the slaves to submit 
to his will. 

Suppose the church to tolerate slave-masters to beat at 
discretion their slave-brethren without being amenable to 
the church, but not to grant the same indulgence to others 
who are not slaveholders, that is, to allow slaveholders to 
beat at discretion their slave brethren, but to excommuni- 
cate all others for the same treatment of their brethren, it 
would not only contradict the rule laid down in Scripture, 
but would be an example of the grossest partiality. Such 
a method is constantly practised in those congregations 
where slaveholding is not considered a term of commun- 
ion : but it gives those societies more the aspect and features 
of dens of thieves, or synagogues of Satan, than societies 
of Christians, united in one faith, one baptism, and living as 
fellow heirs of the grace of life. 

4th. Suppose a slave in the same fellowship of the church 
with his master, should desert his service, at a time when 
he had a rational prospect of escaping, but was unexpected- 



MAKES A SLAVE OF GOD ALMIGHTY. 63 

y brought back, placed again under the government of 
his master, and also that of the church. Suppose the mas- 
ter to libel the slave at the bar of the church, for the crime 
of deserting his service, how could the court condemn the 
slave for the crime of offending God and his brethren, 
when he had only attempted that which every member of 
the court would justify in himself had he been in the same 
condition with the slave. If they justify the slave they 
must condemn the master ; for it is impossible that the 
master can be in duty bound to retain the slave in his 
service, and the slave in duty bound to desert it : it would 
suppose the moral law to be at war with itself There is 
perhaps not a slave master living but would think it just 
in himself, were he a slave, to desert his master's service 
if he could. For a slave master, then, who is in the same 
fellowship of the church with his slave, to whip and abuse 
that slave merely for deserting his service, while in his 
conscience he could justify the same deed in his own per- 
son, would make him a complete image of the devil ; but 
for an ecclesiastical court, professing to act in the name 
and by the authority of Jesus Christ, to pass a judicial cen- 
sure upon a slave under the same circumstances, viewing 
itjhe same way as a deed that they could justify in them- 
selves, would not only resemble the ordinary actions of 
the devil, but it could hardly be distinguished from a judi- 
cial act and deed of the great Pandemonian conclave. 

5th. No court of Jesus Christ can restore an offending 
brother to the communion of the church again, but upon 
confession of his sin, and an engagement through divine 
aid to guard against a repethion of the same offence ; but 
it is impossible to bring a slave to such a confession for 
deserting his master's service, without lying both to God 
and man. It would be contrary to the nature of man, and 
against his conscience even in a depraved state, except he 
was an idiot, and still more so if in a gracious state. A 
true child of God will apply to himself in all its force that 
apostolical precept, " Be ye not servants of men.*' 

MAKES GOD A SLAVE. 

Twenty. fourth — That practice must be criminal which 
tends to make a slave of God Almighty. But slavcholding 
is of that description. 



64 MAKES A SLAVE OF GOD ALMIGHTY. 

1st. The slaveholder has a power to deprive the slave 
of the means of salvation, such as reading the word of 
God, teaching their families, meeting in congregations to 
hear the gospel preached, and of preventing ihem from 
the duties of secret prayer and family religion. These 
are God's ordinary ways of bringing sinners to the know- 
ledge and enjoyment of salvation. If he saves sinners in any 
other way, it may be termed extraordinary, but not his com- 
mon and ordinary v/ay, for faith cometh by hearing, and 
hearingby the word of God.— Romans X. 17. The lan- 
guage of slaveholding is, if God will save the slaves, he 
must do it by some other way than that which is plainly 
revealed in his word ; therefore slaveholding tends to make 
a slave of God himself; which was one of the national 
sins of Judah, that brought upon them the judgments of 
God. Isaiah xliii, 24 : '• Thou hast made me ;a serve 
with thy sins. Thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.'* 

2d. The condition of a slave requires him to submit to 
the arbitrary will of his master ; and whatsoever privileges 
he enjoys, whether spiritual or temporal, must flow through 
his sovereign permission ; so that if God saves him at all 
in the ordinary way, it must be by the permission of the 
slave. master. If he speaks to the slave by his written 
word, it must be by the permission of the master. If he 
addresses him by the preaching of his word, it is by the 
permission of the master. If he meets the slave at the 
throne of grace in the ordinary hours of prayer, it must be 
by permission of the master, who can occupy all his time 
and labor so as to prevent the duty. 

3d. The slaveholder gives to the slave no compensation 
for his labor, but holds it back by extortion, and equally 
deprives the God of heaven of that tribute of praise which 
is due to him from the slave. The business of slavehold- 
ing of necessity keeps the slaves in profound ignorance, so 
that if God saves them in any extraordinary way, he can 
have no tribute of praise, agreeable to his written word ; 
for none are capable of making suitable returns of praise 
or gratitude to God for his goodness who have no know- 
ledge of his word ; so that slaveholding tends in every point 
to enslave God himself, as much as it does the persons of 
those who are actually in a state of slavery. It would be 



UNJUST TOWARDS GOD. 65 

the highest degree of blasphemy to say, that the infinite 
God could be actually a slave ; but to say that slavehold- 
ers, by possessing an unlimited power over their slaves, 
and by keeping them in a state of profound ignorance, do 
their utmost to make him a slave, is neither blasphemy nor 
an untruth. 

UNJUST TOWARDS GOD. 

Tweniy.jifth — That practice must be criminal which 
lays a foundation for injustice towards God, or furnishes 
a pretext for withholding from him the duties of praise 
and adoration. But slaveholding is of that nature. 

If God has granted to men a moral right to rob one 
another of all their rights and privileges, and in particu- 
lar the right of reading his word, and thereby to preclude 
the slaves from rendering to himself the duties of adora- 
tion and praise, they may on the same principle conclude, 
that they may, with equal impunity, rob him of his declar- 
ative glory by withholding all acts of adoration and praise : 
the conclusion is as natural and just as that the number 4 is 
the necessary result of the addition of 2 and 2, It is most 
probable that this process of argument is the chief reason 
why a family of pious slaveholders who occupy the sta- 
lion in its proper character, with its necessary appendages, 
is as rare to be found in a slave state, as a company of 
white crows on the plains of Sandusky. But the last re- 
sult of this process of reasoning is mo-st liable to be specu- 
lative atheism ; because that man who is once led to be- 
lieve it his duty to occupy a station in the moral world 
which empowers him with impunity to contravene all 
moral obligations relative lo his fellow men, with a right 
to transmit the same office pnd power to his posteritv for- 
ever, may readily conclude that either the God of the 
universe delights in acts of injustice and robbery among 
men, or else that there is no God at all. The first he 
cannot admit, as it would make him a devil. He will 
then be apt to conclude that either slaveholding must be 
criminal, or there is no God. But his persisting in the 
practice is an indication that he at least says in his heart, 
there is no God. 

6* 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 



AGAINST INFANT BAPTISM. 



Tioeniy-sixth — If infant baptism is an ordinance of God, 
slaveholding must be wrong. 

The baptism of infants is in no respect a duty, but 
when parents or guardians come under vows to train up 
their infants in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; 
because no child having arrived to the years of under- 
standing, can be bound by a baptismal covenant to apply 
the blessings sealed in baptism, nor the obligations of the 
moral law, if it has never been taught to know them. A 
knowledge of duty is essential to the being of a baptismal 
obligation to perform duty. If no person is bound to teach 
the child its duty when it is capable of being taught, the 
ordinance is void. But slaveholding prevents the possi- 
bility of slave parents from coming under baptismal vows 
for their children, because their children are all robbed 
from them as soon as born, and are liable to be sold and 
dispersed throughout the world ; and if they were even 
suffered to remain with them, they have no power to in- 
struct them farther than their masters grant them indul- 
gence; therefore to require slave parents to come under 
vows for their children in baptism would be a profanation 
of the ordinance. For the masters of slaves to take on 
them baptismal vows for their slave children, would be 
still worse. It would imply an administration of the or- 
dinance, without either a promise for encouMgement or a 
precept to authorize it, and imply a dedication to the Lord 
of that which the person dedicating had no right to pos- 
sess, but obtained it from the parents by violence ; whereas 
God has said that he hates robbery for burnt offering. 

Objection. — Abraham was commanded to circumcise 
all born in his house, and bought with his money. — 
Genesis, xvii, 13. 

Answer. — It has been already shewn that Abraham's 
servants were not slaves. 

Again ; the command of God to Abraham to circumcise 
all born in his house or bought with his money, was a 
method of preventing them from ever being slaves, and 
their children after them forever; because their circum- 
cision initiated them into the church, and secured to them 
liberty, with all the civil and religious privileges of the 



AGAINST ALL LAWS, DIVINE OR HUMAN. 67 

Jewish people. But for a slaveholder to have his slaves 
baptized, admitting- they were his lawful property, would 
be a ratification of their bondage, because the baptism of 
a person is not only a ratification of the new covenant 
promises, but a seal and ratificalion of all the obligations 
of the moral law upon that person. If then slaveholding 
was morally right, the baptism of slaves would rivet the 
chains of bondage upon them — if wrong, it would be a 
giving the lie both to God and man, by an ostensible rati- 
fication of bondage upon the slaves, in direct contradic- 
tion to the law of God, and prove a strong temptation to 
slave masters to believe a lie, that is, to believe they were 
doing God service by keeping their neighbors and breth- 
ren in a state of unmerited bondage. It would also imply 
an application of God's promises sealed in baptism, to 
enable them to perpetrate most atrocious wickedness, and 
a most daring attempt to make God a partaker with them 
in sin ; therefore to admit slaveholders to be sponsors for 
their slave children in baptism, must be a piece of con- 
summate wickedness. 

AGAINST ALL LAWS, DIVINE AND HUMAN. 

Twenty-seventh — That practice must be sinful which 
is not conformable to any law either divine or human. 
But slaveholding is of that nature. 

That the practice of slaveholding is contrary to the 
moral law, has been abundantly shown, therefore all the 
support it can be supposed to have, must be drawn from 
the civil law ; but no civil authority can make that to be 
right which is morally wrong, yet a civil precept may be 
morally wrong on the part of the authority commanding, 
which may be innocently obeyed, as when the matter of 
the obedience required may be done without violating 
any moral precept. Thus, exorbitant duties on articles 
of commerce may be paid, oppressive taxes may be dis* 
charged, and a slave may, in obedience to his master, la- 
bor without wages. The matter of obedience in these 
cases and such like being indifferent, the authority may 
be obeyed without sin ; but when the civil authority com- 
mands the subjects to fight in an unjust war, or the slave- 
holder commands the slave to labor on the Sabbath, 



G8 PRODUCES PARTIALITY IN TRIALS. 

obedience cannot be without sin, because both the com- 
mand and obedience to it are forbidden by the moral law. 
Obedience in such cases even to preserve life, would be 
to obey man rather than God. But slaveholders are un- 
der no such temptations in relation to the civil law, though, 
slavery is tolerated by the governments of slave states, and 
the civil law protects men in the practice, yet it obliges 
no man to purchase or to hold a slave, so that siavehold- 
ing has not the being or form of obedience to any law 
eiilier divine or human, and has nothing to countenance 
it but the mere indulgence of civil authority, without the 
color of preceptive obligation. As slaveholding then, is 
contrary to the moral law, and has no preceptive authori- 
ty from the civil law, it must be exceeding sinful, and 
such as are engaged in the practice may well be ranked 
with the lawless and disobedient. — 1 Tim. i. 9, 10. 

PRODUCES PARTIALITY IN TRIALS. 

Twenty-eighth — That practice must be criminal, which 
cannot be supported without partiality in the administra- 
tion ofjustice. Lev. xxiv. 21, 22. ♦' Hethatkillethabeast, 
he shall restore it, and he that killeth a man, he shall be 
put to death. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well 
for the stranger, as one of your own country, for I am the 
Lord your God." But it is impossible to keep up the 
practice of slavery in any state or district, without par- 
tiality in the administration ofjustice. 

1st. The petty crimes of freemen are tried by a court 
and jury, which gives the innocent a fair opportunity of 
being heard and honorably acquitted, and the guilty to be 
condemned ; but the cause of the slave in ordinary cases, 
has to be tried and decided by the verdict of one man, and 
the kind and degree of punishment is left entirely to his 
arbitrary will. Should he even take his life, he has noth- 
ing to fear but a kind of mock trial ; for although the mur- 
der of slaves is quite common in every slave state and in 
every district where slavery is practised, yet the strang- 
ling of a master or overseer for the murder of a slave is as 
rarely heard of as the funeral of a devil. 

2d. The laws of every commonwealth throughout the 
union, preclude the trial of criminals by torture ; but in the 



VIOLATES THE BIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE, 69 

case of slave holders trying their slaves for petty crimes, 
nothing is more common than to put them to the most 
cruel torture, merely to find out whether they are guilty or 
not, and also to compel them to accuse others. In the 
course of such trials many innocent persons suffer, and 
many innocent persons are accused by such as are under 
torture merely to alleviate their misery. 

3d. Many slaves are condemned and executed for 
breaking the laws, while by force they are restrained from 
that instruction which is requisite to know the laws of men, 
and at the same time their punishments are greater than 
those of freemen. Thus slaves in many instances are 
punished with death for crimes, which only subject free- 
men to the penitentiary. This partiality is the more 
shocking, that the crimes of freemen are committed 
against laws which ihey have every opportunity of know- 
ing, while the slaves are denied the right of using the 
means that are requisite to know the laws, and yet are 
subject to heavier punishments. This partial procedure 
in the administration of justice, is directly contrary to the 
word of God. Luke xii. 47 : '' That servant who knew his 
Lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according 
to his will, shall be beaten wMth many stripes. But he that 
knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall 
be beaten with few stripes." But partiality in the distribu- 
tion of penalties to slaves and freemen, is necessarily at- 
tached to slavery ; because slavery is itself the same kind 
of punishment with the penitentiary ; and to condemn a 
slave to the penitentiary, would be no additional punish- 
ment. 

Therefore, as one sin leads to another, the sin of slave- 
holding necessarily leads to the sin of murder. If death 
is a punishment greater than the crime deserves, it is mur- 
der. If it is no greater, why is not the freeman punished 
the same way. Therefore partiality in the administration 
of justice is a necessary consequence of slaveholding. 

VIOLATES THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. 

Twenty-ninth — That practice must be criminal which 
cannot be supported without persecution, and an open vio- 



70 VIOLATES THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. 

lation of the rights of conscience. But slaveholding is of 
that description. 

1st. Slaveholding cannot be supported in any state or 
kingdom, without imperiously restraining the slaves from 
the means of knowledge. But all who enjoy the means of 
knowledge, are in duty bound, according to their stations 
and circumstances, to teach the ignorant by making them 
acquainted with God's word, which implies a knowledge 
of his law, his gospel, his doctrines, and the whole duty of 
man. But the laws of slave states by fines and penalties, 
prevent the free inhabitants from teaching the slaves to 
read the word of God, even though they found themselves 
most solemnly bound by the word of God and their own 
consciences to instruct them, therefore persecution is neces- 
sary for the support of slavery. 

2d. But all mankind who have access to the Scriptures 
are bound to search them. John v. 39 : " Search the Scrip- 
tures." This obligation is upon us all, both black and white, 
and the Scripture is a gift of God to all, containing a pre- 
cious treasure of all things pertaining to life and godliness. 
2. Timothy, iii. 16 : " All Scripture is given by inspira- 
tion of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of 
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works," But it is impossible to search the Scriptures, or to 
enjoy all those spiritual advantages without learning to 
read. Suppose, then, a slave to feel bound in his con- 
science to learn to read the word of God, (and there are 
numerous examples of this sort) the attempt would be re- 
polled by force and power, and if persisted in would ex- 
pose him to torture. If private Christians attempt to learn 
them to read on the Lord's day, they are violently pre- 
vented by bands of patrolers, who have authority to dis- 
perse the blacks if more than four or five are found toge- 
ther, except they are immediately under the eyes of mas- 
ters or overseers. In some slave states the attempt would 
expose the teachers to fines and imprisonment. 

Suppose a slave to possess gifts to fit him to preach the 
everlasting gospel, it is without all doubt the indispensable 
duty of the church to ordain him to that office. But if he 
should be ordained, he is prevented by tyrannical power 



AND SANCTIONS PERSECUTION. 71 

from going forth to preach the gospel to every creature. 
And that church judicature which would call him forth 
from his unlawful subjection to his ungodly tyrant to fulfil 
his office would be treated as dangerous enemies, and if 
persisted in, would cause them to suffer by the hands of the 
executioner. In most of the slave states the hiws are such 
as to prevent any preachers of the gospel from attempting 
to collect the black people into congregations for the pur- 
pose of hearing the gospel preached, and the blacks would 
be cruelly tortured if found in that situation. From all 
which it may be safely concluded, that with all our boast- 
ed freedom and rights of conscience established by the 
federal constitution, that there is now and constantly car- 
ried on in the United States a most cruel persecution, and 
nothing prevents it from being as sanguinary as in the 
reign of bloody Mary, but faithfulness in Christian profes- 
sors. 

But there are circumstances of horror on the side of 
American persecutors, which makes their guilt infinitely 
more aggravated than that of the persecutors in Mary's 
reign, or even of the inquisitors in Spain or Portugal. 
Those polished persecutors were apt to have the glory of 
God for their motive or end, and were liable to think they 
were doing God service. But our persecutors have no os- 
tensible motive but gain. Under the Popish persecutions, 
the people were not compelled to labor on the Lord's day ; 
but under American persecution, the slaves are liable to be 
compelled to labor on the Sabbath, or suffer torture. If in 
some slave states there are some partial laws against mas- 
ters compelling their slaves to labor on the Sabbath, they 
can be of little account where a master is so disposed ; 
because the slave testimony is not admissible in any court. 
Little more than a year ago, two brothers in Gallatin coun- 
ty, in the state of Kentucky, ordered their slaves to labor 
on the Sabbath. Upon their refusal, they were put to the 
torture, scourged most unmercifully until they submitted 
to the will of the tyrants, and also bowed down on their 
knees imploring their pardon. One of them was a profes- 
sor of religion ; and although he complied to labor on the 
Sabbath, yet would not dishonor his God by bowing down 
to worship any fellow mortal ; on account of which his 



t2 AND VIOLATES THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE; 

torture was increased, but he persisted in his integrity. 
One happy circumstance which attended this bloody tra- 
gedy was, that the brains, the tongues and tlie hearts of 
the persecutors were such that their wicked persecution 
could occasion no reproach to the Christian religion. 

2d, The occasion of persecution by the popish party, 
was the same in the main with that under the American 
government. One chief reason of persecution with the 
former was the use of the Bible. The Protestants would 
have it, to read and improve it as a rule of faith and prac 
tice. Their persecutors would withhold it from them by 
subjecting them to severe penalties if Bibles were found in 
their houses. That which is the great cause of persecu- 
tion in slave states, are attempts made by conscientious 
persons to teach the blacks to read the Bible, and attempts 
by the blacks themselves to learn to read, and have the 
use of the Scriptures ; but the slaveholders who are sup- 
ported by law, imperiously withhold them from the use of 
the Scriptures, by restraining them from all means of 
learning to read it. It comes to the same thing in the 
event, and the kind of persecution is the same whether the 
Bible is by force withheld from the people, or the people 
by force withheld from the Bible. But there are two 
other circumstances of aggravation attached to the hea- 
ven-daring guilt of slaveholding persecutors with which the 
others were not chargeable. The popish persecutors 
never restrained the Protestants from learning to read ; 
so that although the Bible was withheld from them, they 
were apt to have opportunities of keeping Bibles in some 
private situation ; or if they could not always succeed in 
that, they could read other books, and were liable to cul- 
tivate their minds so far as to acquire a knowledge of the 
gospel. But our slaveholders will not suffer the slaves to 
learn to read. They prevent the stream of knowledge 
by stopping the fountain head, as if their whole scheme 
was to have them cursed with ignorance in this world, and 
damned in that to come. 

3d. The Protestants, under popish persecutors, were 
suffered to improve their minds in knowledge, so as 
to know their duty to God, and were capable of vindicat- 
ing his cause by suffering martyrdom for his sake, and of 



WILL NOT ADMIT OF PRAYER. 73 

enjoying consolation under their sufferings from God's 
promises ; but slaveholding persecutors completely pre. 
vent their slaves from knowing the will of God, and ren- 
der them incapable of suffering for his sake, or of enjoy- 
ing any consolations from his promises under their afflic- 
tions ; and thus, ns fcir as they can, try to make them mis- 
erable in body and mind, both for time and eternity, so 
that the character of a real slaveholder assimilates more 
nearly to that of the devil than any popish persecutor of 
which we have any knowledge from history. 

While preparing these sheets for the press, we have 
authentic accounts of more than fifty martyrs suffering 
death in Charleston, S. C, for the cause of civil liberty, 
or for attempting that which their cruel persecutors and 
murderers would have considered heroic virtue in their 
own persons, if their condition had been the same with 
that of the slaves. So that slaveholding is a system of 
wickedness, and necessarily requires for its support most 
cruel and bloody persecution of the innocent, particularly 
of such as for conscience' sake would attempt to defend 
their civil and religious liberties, of such also, as for con- 
science' sake desire to read the Bible, that they may know 
the way of salvation, and of those who, from the same mo- 
tives would attempt to enlighten the minds of these be- 
nighted heathen in theii' present condition ; so that none 
of our modern scribes and pharisees need build the sepul- 
chres of the Protestant martyrs, and say, if we had lived 
in the day of our fathers, we would not have been par- 
takers with them in the blood of the martyrs. Wherefore 
ye are witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children 
of them who killed the martyrs ; fill ye up the measure of 
your fathers. Ye serpents, yc generation of vipers, how 
can ye escape the damnation of hell. 

WILL NOT ADMIT OF PRAYER. 

Thirtieth — That practice must be criminal which will 
not admit of an evangelical prayer to God for its support. 
But slaveholding is of that description. 

1st. Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God for 

things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with 

thankful acknowledgments of his mercies. When we 

pray to God, two things are necessary for its acceptance. 

7 



74 WILL NOT ADMIT OF PRAYER. 

One is, that the thing for which we pray must be lawful. 
The other is, that there must be some gospel promises 
which has a relation to the things sought by prayer, which 
the person praying must plead upon. 

1st. First then, the things sought by prayer must be 
lawful, for prayer to God implies an appeal to him with 
all the solemnities of an oath, that the things we ask are in 
their nature lawful. But there is no precept of the moral 
law that will make it lawful to steal the property of anoth- 
er, or to rob him of his possessions. But the liberty of a 
man is his property, and the labor of a man is his proper- 
ty ; it is that by which he lives. The children of parents 
are their property, more precious than any other earthly 
goods. To take all of these from our neighbors, whom 
we are bound by the law and the prophets to love as our- 
selves, is the greatest outrage upon moral justice that is 
possible to be committed in either earth or hell. Yea, it 
is atheism, for the slaveholder exalts himself above all that 
is called God, as will appear from two reasons. 

(1.) God never exacts any service from his rational 
creatures, without a compensation ; because his creation 
and preservation of them is of infinitely more value than 
all their services. 

(2.) The slaveholder, by his office and station, has a 
power to supersede all the precepts of God's laws in rela- 
tion to the slave, both as to acts of religious worship and 
all relative duties which he owes to 'mankind as the duties 
of parents to children, and those of children to parents. 
No slave can take time or use any means to know the will 
of God, or to worship him, nor power to teach his family, 
or to require obedience from his family, nor can children 
obey their parents but through the sovereign will of the 
master, so that slaveholding is so far from being sanction^ 
ed by the law of God, that it is the highest degree of wick- 
edness and contrariety to the law of God. 

Where, then, can a man be found on the globe who can 
appeal to God with all the solemnity of an oath, and say, 
that slaveholding is a duty commanded by his Jaw. 

2d. There is no promise in the gospel to secure the 
blessing of God to any person in the business of keep- 
ing slaves, but there are some curses. Jeremiah, xxii. 13 : 
•' Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteous- 



WILL NOT ADMIT OF PRAYER. 75 

ness, and his chambers by wrong, that useth his neighbor's 
service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." 
It would even amount to blasphemy to suppose that there 
could be a promise in God's \yord that would secure his 
blessing to acts of theft and robbery ; therefore there is not 
a promise in the Bible for a slaveholder to plead upon for 
strength to support him in the practice of slaveholding, and 
it is highly probable that there never was an example of 
one who coolly and deliberately prayed to God for Christ's 
sake to assist him in forcibly restraining his neighbors 
from enjoying freedom, and to enable him to exact his la- 
bor without wages. That which appears to approach the 
nearest to it, was the case of a slaveholder in York coun- 
ty, state of Pennsylvania above thirty years ago, who 
owned some slaves, one of whom, through hard usage, was 
in the habit of running away, but was brought back to his 
owner one morning before the usual form of family de- 
votion was past. The slave was instantly suspended in 
the air by his two hands with his toes just touching the 
ground, when, after they had beaten him with an unmer- 
ciful number of stripes, they left him in the same condi- 
tion, retired within the house, performed family worship, 
returned when done, and gave the poor slave the remain- 
der of his punishment. 

If the fact now related tends to fill the mind with hor- 
ror, how would it shock humanity to listen to a tale of one 
attempting to pray to God to enable him to keep his 
neighbors from ever enjoying liberty more ; and to assist 
him in withholding from him the due reward of his labor, 
and to bless his endeavors to keep his slaves in a state of 
profound ignorance. 

But as the Scripture makes it the duty of all men to 
pray, slaveholders are equally in duty bound to pray : 
and, in praying, to plead with God for grace and strength 
to help them to perform every branch of incumbent duty 
with all their might. If slaveholding is a duty, it must 
lay the master under an obligation to pray to God for 
strength and wisdom to fulfil his duty according to the 
true nature and tendency of the practice. It may not be 
amiss then to lay down a form of prayer for salve- 
holders, adapted to the proper nature of the business, and 
suited to the office and station of a slaveholder. 



76 THE slaveholer's prayer. 

THE SLAVEHOLDER'S PRAYER. 

Almighty God ! I thank thee that I am not as other men are, 
or even as these sable sons and daughters of Africa, which in thy 
providence are under my dominion. I thank thee that I am an 
absolute sovereign, possessed of an incontrollable authority over 
mv subjects ; that I am accountable to none upon earth for the 
disposal of their persons, or the administration of my government 
over them. I desire to admire the condescension of my great Cre- 
ator in permitting me to occupy a station in the moral world more 
significant of sovereign independence than his own. Thou dost 
never demand a tribute of humble service from any of thy subjects 
without a reward. But i can demand implicit obedience by the 
supremacy of my power, and the vengeance of my rod, without 
the humbling thought of diminishing my fortune, and robbing my 
infant ofisprmg, by distributing rewards to my humble subjects. 
With an exalted sense of my magisterial dignity, my soul doth 
magnify the Lord, and praise the God of my exaltation. Thou dost 
rule by established laws, which must of necessity correspond with 
the relations which thou hast made to exist between thyself and 
thy creatures, and the natural relations w^hich exist among thy 
creatures, and canst not, consistently with the honor of thy king, 
dom, make laws to contradict or invert the order of relative duties. 
But, in thy providence, I am placed in a station of absolute suprem- 
acy, in which my sovereign will is a law to my subjects. I can 
say to one, at any time. Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, 
and he Cometh. My will supersedes the relative obhgations of 
rendering to thee the morning and evening sacrifice, by a rigorous 
demand of incessant labor, from the dawning light to the evening 
shade. I can say to one. Be married, and he must be married ; 
and to another, Let thy marriage be dissolved, and it must be dis- 
solved. I can say to my virgin slaves. Be fruitful, multiply, and 
replenish my plantation, and my command will be obeyed. I have 
an absolute power over conjugal relations, parental relations, and 
filial relations ; and all the reciprocal duties of these relations , 
waiich the moral lav/ would require of my subjects if they were not 
slaves, must yield to my despotical will. But O, Almighty Sove- 
reign, though I am a debtor to thee for the exalted rank I occupy 
in the scale of moral existence, I must plead my inability to gov- 
ern with discretion these my subjects, without I am taught the 
wisdom of the serpent and the vengeance of the tiger. I confess 
there is a kind of original sin, derived from our first father, Adam, 
which is peculiarly manifest in our subjects, by discontentment, and 
an unwillingness to submit to the authority of their lawful sovereigns, 
accompanied with murmurings and pleadings that they have the 
same right to freedom with their masters, making use of certain 
cant phrases, as — the rights of man — the right of worshiping God 
where and when they please — the right of learning to read the Bi- 
ble — and some have had theassurance to plead their right of wages. 
These, almighty Sovereign, are some of the bitter fruits of Adam's 
fall ; but thanks to thy goodness, thou hast endowed us sovereign 
potentates with power and wisdom to prevent the pernicious effects 



THE slaveholder's PRAYER. 77 

of these turbulent passions. We have, by the authority of our civil 
rulers, wh(j are thy ministers, and by our own sovereign power, 
put a final stop to all sehemcs, designs, or attempts to teacli our 
subjects the knowledge of reading, writing, or any branch of sci- 
ence, for this laudable reason, that the more they know, they arc 
so much more noisy in pleading for natural riglits ; and the less 
they know, they are so much easier governed. We can appeal to 
thy omniscience, that ignorance in our subjects is essential to the 
permanent existence of our government. We beseech thee, for the 
sake of our supreme dominion, to grant us the true spirit of our 
station; that when any of our subjects attempt to reason with us 
in favor of natural rights, we may maintain the majesty of our 
rank, by attempting no refutation but by the logic of the rod or 
whip. Enable us, we beseech thee, to display our dignity by a no- 
ble liberality and readiness to entertain strangers, especially ladies 
and gentlemen of rank and fortune; and to sympathize with all 
such poor of the land as we cannot make subject to our despotical 
power ; but all such as we either have, or may hereafter bring un- 
der our yoke, may we have spirit and energy to rule with a rod of 
iron. Enable us to keep our subjects from the use of the Bible, 
and bless all our endeavors to prevent them from learning to read 
it ; and grant to them such a degree of stupidity and want of con- 
cern about their eternal state, as to have no inclination to read the 
Bible or any other book. Shut up all their intellectual faculties, 
so as they may know nothing but obedience to their master's com- 
mands. Lord, keep from within our borders all preachers of the 
Gospel, except such as arc slaveholders themselves ; that when 
they are led to preach upon the subject of slavery, they may never 
attempt to prove their doctrine from the Scripture, but prove the 
sense of the Scripture from their doctrine. Teach us the most pru- 
dent methods of exacting from our good slaves as large a portion 
of hard labor as they may at all be able to bear without entirely 
sinking under the load ; and keeping us from killing our bad ones 
by any other method than liard labor. Grant to all our subjects 
that patience under their privations and sufferings which belongs 
to slavery ; and let them sec that our dominion over them nmst be 
just, seeing that, in all points in which it tends to enslave them, it 
tends to enslave thee ; and that, as the God of heaven serves with 
our sovereign will, they, poor reptiles, need not hesitate to do the 
same. Forgive the superstition of our brethren in sovereignty, 
who, from conscientious scruples about ihe condition of slaves, 
have made some feeble attempts to learn Ihem to read the Bible. 
Teach them to know that the future happiness of slaves need be 
no matter of concern with slaveholders ; because they and their 
slaves can never dwell together in the same heaven. Forgive not 
the sin of those who have liberated their slaves and thereby cast 
odium upon us, as we cannot forgive them. Lead us not into com. 
passion for the temporal or eternal miseries of slaves. Deliver us 
from the evil of sympathy for them when under the discipline of 
the rod or whip ; or for parents, when we tear from them their in- 

7* 



78 HINDERS THE GOSPEL. 

fants, to be disposed of for money ; and from commiseration for 
those of our subjects who may be spectators to their near relations 
under the torture of the whip, or the excruciating torment of the 
sahne solution, liberally applied to the lacerated back, and for those 
children who may be sometimes compelled to scourge their parents. 
Save us from ever being slaves to the blacks in hell, as they have 
been to us upon earth : and may ours be the kingdom, and the 
power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 

HINDERS THE SUCCESS OF THE GOSPEL. 

Lastly — From the small success of the gospel in slave 
states when compared with the free states, it may be dis- 
cerned that there is some public, notorious, God-dishonor- 
ing conduct persisted in, which renders it inconsistent 
with the glory of God and the honor of Christianity to 
make the means of grace effectual among them. This 
may be evinced from two reasons. One is, that there is 
no promise of success with the administration of the gos- 
pel where the whole counsel of God is not declared. But 
preachers of the gospel in slave states do not declare from 
the word of God his displeasure at the practice of slave- 
holding, but are apt to encourage it by their own exam- 
ple. 2dly. We cannot expect that God will bless the 
means of grace to any people, who, for the sake of indul- 
ging themselves in the worst kind of extortion, will with- 
hold the same means from all under their power, and thus 
deprive them of their spiritual rights as well as temporal. 
Neither have we any reason to think that God will accept 
the persons and religious services of those who are already 
professors of religion, while they are engaged in the same 
hell-deserving practice. Prov. xv. 8 : '' The sacrifice of 
the wicked is an abomination to the Lord." How ap- 
plicable to such a people are the Lord's words addressed to 
the apostleizing Jews. Isaiah i., 10 — 20; "Hear the 
word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give ear unto the 
law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what pur- 
pose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the 
Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the 
fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of lambs 
or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who 
hath required this at your hands to tread my courts? 
Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination 



PRO-SLAVERY ARGDMENTS. 79 

unto me. The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of 
assemblies, I cannot away with. It is iniquity. Even 
the solemn meeting, your new moons, and your appointed 
feasts, my soul hateth. These are an abomination unto 
me. I am weary to bear them ; and when ye spread 
forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea, 
when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your 
hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean ; 
put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. 
Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, re- 
lieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the 
widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the 
Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they 
shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall 
eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye 
shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the 
Lord hath spoken it." 



CHAPTER IV. 

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY. 

Some time previous to my entering upon the present 
subject, a fragment of a pamphlet came into my hands, 
which had been designed for a defence of slavery, the title- 
page of which was gone, and a considerable part of the 
work itself I labored by inquiry in different directions 
to get one entire, but found it impossible ; which led me 
to conclude that either by excessive reading it had become 
in a manner extinct, or else, through want of reading and 
neglect, it had become a prey to the moths, the moles, and 
the bats. In the part which fell into my hands, I found 
nothing worthy of notice, except three things, in pages 
sixteen and seventeen. 

Argument first. — Our author asserts that the business 
of emancipation belongs to the legislative authority, but 
not to the church of God as such. 

Answer first. — If the slaves were public property, 
or belonged to the commonwealth as such, the govern- 



80 PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 

ment might dispose of them at pleasure. Neither could 
the church or any other particular society take cognizance 
of their case more than that of enlisted soldiers, who are 
public property. But the slaves are not public property ; 
they are recognized by the government, and by the laws 
of every slave state, as private property, as much as 
houses, lands, or cattle, that are lawfully purchased. Ad- 
mitting that slaveholding was just, the legislature could 
have no more right to emancipate the slaves than they 
have a right to deprive any of the chizens of their houses, 
lands, or cattle. Therefore the business, if morally right, 
is a matter with which the legislature cannot interfere. If 
it is morally wrong, it is the business of the legislature to 
rectify that wrong, by establishing rules of justice through- 
out the community, to suppress the practice. It must also 
be the business of every member of the community, be- 
cause the people themselves are the government, and the 
members of the legislature are only their agents. There- 
fore, as the people are the proper constituents of govern- 
ment, it is their place to take an active part, both by 
counsel, advice, example, and in electing representatives, 
to try to emancipate the slaves. 

Answer second. — If the practice is wrong, the holders 
of slaves cannot retain them by force one day, without 
contracting guilt, so that if the legislature is in duty bound 
to suppress slavery, it must be because that slaveholders 
neglect their duty, and that neglect calls forth the exertion 
of the legislature, therefore the emancipation of slaves is 
first the business of the private possessors of them. 

That the churches of God are eminently concerned in 
the business of emancipation is manifest. 

1st, Because Christians, through the light of the gospel 
and the influence of the Divine Spirit, are liable to have 
more correct ideas of the extent and spirituality of the 
moral law, and its obligations upon all ranks of society, 
than others; therefore their superior knowledge and ex- 
perience lay them under peculiar obligations to use their 
best endeavors to have the slave emancipated. God's 
word testifies that to whom much is given, of them much 
is required. 

2d. The church of God is forbidden to give that which 



PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 81 

is holy to the dogs, or to cast his pearls before swine. 
That is, to dispense the holy seals of his covenant, and 
grant other peculiar privileges of his house to such as are 
ignorant or scandalous. If slaveholding is sinful, it is so 
exceeding sinful that if any class of sinners may be com- 
pared to dogs or swine, slaveholders may. 

3d. The church of Christ are bound, as faithful wit- 
nesses for Christ, and agents called to officiate in his 
name when they admit members to church fellowship, to 
make a difference between the clean and the unclean, and 
are forbidden to make the table of the Lord a table of 
devils, so that they are bound to take cognizance of every 
criminal act or practice as far as it may be known or 
persisted in. Neither ought the decisions of the legisla- 
ture or of any civil court to have any influence over an 
ecclesiastical court respecting the terms of communion. 
If the church must be governed by the legislature in the 
admission or non-admission of slaveholders to fellowship, 
she may be governed by civil determinations in all mat- 
ters of a moral kind, which would throw the whole power 
of ecclesiastical government into the hands of the civil 
authority, and make church officers to be mere tools of 
civil power, and recognize civil government as head of 
the church ; therefore the practice of slaveholding comes 
as directly under the special cognizance of church courts, 
as horse stealing or any other transgression of the moral 
law, and is as much more deserving of excommunication, 
as man stealing is worse than horse stealing. 

It appears that a more shocking declaration can hardly 
be imagined than that of our author. If slaveholding is 
lawful, it surely belongs to the church to justify it, and to 
pray for its support. If it is immoral, it belongs to the 
church to purge herself of so criminal a practice. But 
the doctrine inculcated by the author, is highly worthy of 
a slaveholder, whose station as such makes him head 
over all the concerns of his slaves, and all relations and 
relative duties, both civil and spiritual ; and the same ar- 
guments which go to justify a slave-master in officiating 
as head over all the spiritual and temporal concerns of 
the slaves, will equally justify the civil authority in assum- 
ing headship over the church. 



82 PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS, 

Arg. 2. Page 18, our author grants " That the act of 
subjecting the Africans to perpetual servitude, was a vio- 
lation of equity which ought to be observed by nations in 
their transactions with one another." In the same page, 
says he, " The principles of operation upon which the 
political machine is set in motion, may make things pro- 
per or improper, which would not be so should the course 
of the civil establishment be different." The sense of 
our author's words in this argument appears to be to this 
effect, that the Africans were unjustly subjected to slavery 
at first, but that the principles upon which our govern- 
ment is put into operation may make things proper or im- 
proper, which would not be so should the course of the 
civil establishment be different. When these declarations 
are applied to the subject of African slavery, they must 
mean, that as the civil establishment can make things law- 
ful which were immoral before, so our government hav- 
ing sanctioned slavery by law has made it lawful, although 
it was in its nature immoral before. Answer. Slavery 
is so far from being any thing upon which or by which 
our political machine was set in motion that the reverse 
is manifest from the very foundation of the constitution. 
(See the Declaration of Independence, page 1st,) " We 
hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are cre- 
ated equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, that amongst these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So that African 
slavery is so far from having a place in our political ma- 
chine, or even from being a necessary production of it, 
that it is condemned by the Constitution, and is only per- 
mitted by the administration. Although laws have been 
passed to protect the citizens in holding slaves, yet no one 
is bound to either purchase slaves, or to hold them in 
possession; and although the civil authority did oblige 
the people to hold them it would be no reason why they 
should obey. Such a law, rather than the la\y of God, 
that forbids man-stealing under pain of death, it is a mani- 
fest conclusion from the author's words in the above cita- 
tion ; that the civil legislature of a nation has a power of 
changing the obligations of the moral law by making that 
to be just which the moral law condemns, and condemning 



PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 83 

that which it has made just, if a civil legislature has a 
right and power thus to invert the obligations of God's 
law in one case, it must have the same in all points of 
moral obligation. This is the doctrine of passive obedi- 
ence with a witness though the civil authority may pass 
unjust laws that may be innocently obeyed. But the 
matter of obedience in such cases, is in its nature indiffe- 
rent; but none will imagine that the business of holding 
men in a state of unmerited, involuntary, hereditary bond- 
age is a matter of indifference, but that it comes immedi- 
ately under the obligation of the moral law to either jus- 
tify or condemn it. 

Arg. 3. Page 23. " It is nonsense to say that those who 
use them as well as their bound condition of life will ad- 
mit, deprive them of liberty. We cannot deprive a per- 
son of a thing of which he is not in possession. We find 
them in a state of privation ; they may be used in this 
condition of servitude with full conformity to that summary 
of the divine law, do unto others as ye would they should 
do unto you." 

Answer. Our author asserts that we cannot deprive a 
person of a thing of which he is not in possession. This 
declaration is at variance with innumerable facts. For 
example — many a child is deprived of an estate which 
it never had in possession, but had a just right to pos- 
sess ; and many Africans are deprived of a right to 
freedom which they never had in possession. The ques- 
tion at issue is not whether the African slaves ever 
possessed freedom, but whether they possess a right to be 
free ; there is a right of freedom and a power of enjoying 
it. The Africans in a slate of slavery have the same 
right to freedom with all mankind, but they possess not 
the power ; for the power is on the side of the oppress- 
ors, while they have no comforter. For a people to 
lose the power of freedom, is no reason why they should 
lose their right to it, because it would suppose physical 
force to be the rule of human action ; this would be the 
unavoidable consequence. If ever the Africans had a 
moral right to be free, and lost that right by physical force, 
it will suppose that it was first morally right for them to 
be free. But physical force has made it to be morally 



84 PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 

wrong. Our author then, taking it for granted that his posi- 
tion is just, with an air of triumph asserts, " That they 
may be used in their present condition of servitude, with 
full conformity to that summary of the divine law, ' Do to 
others as you would they should do to you.' " This rule 
is not to be applied to our passions or appetites. It goes up. 
on principles of equity, and does not afford relief to all those 
demands which might exist in the breast of our neighbor. 
Many of the covetous and extortioners have strained 
their inventive powers to wrest this text, but it will speak 
for itself. Our author, either from a consciousness of the 
impregnable force he had to encounter, or else from mere 
modesty, only undertakes the exposition of one part of the 
text, leaving out that part which is essential to the true 
application of the whole, the words as recorded, Matthew 
vii. 12, read thus : " Therefore all things whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye also to them, for 
this is the law and the prophets." If he had taken in the 
first clause of the text, all things, it would have embraced 
every thing without exception, and in particular the right 
of freedom as well as the power of it. The sense of the 
words cannot be mistaken by any rational being, except 
such as are disposed to wrest it in accommodation to their 
own peculiar prejudices. It suiKciently guards against 
any such abuse as our author insinuates ; the sense is 
plain and determined, " all things whatsoever,"&;c. That 
is, let the thing be what it may, if you wish another to do 
it to you, it lies imperiously upon you to do the very same 
for them also. So that the more that we give way to 
ungenerous and extravagant wishes of service from others 
around us, the heavier and more is the load of duty, 
which we bring upon ourselves ; therefore the words can 
mean no other than this, that in all things in which it 
would be just and lawful for us to wish another to do a 
favor to us we should allow ourselves to do the same 
unto him. As this text relates to the case of slavery, we 
may put the same question to ourselves. If I and my 
posterity were subject to a state of unmerited, involuntary, 
hereditary slavery, could I reasonably wish that such as 
withhold liberty from me and my posterity, would release 
us from that bondage ? If this would be a lawful wish, 



PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 86 

which none will dispute, it will necessarily follow that we 
should do the same to them who may be in bondage to us. 

Again. If we wish the Africans to be in bondage to us, 
could we, upon their wishing our servitude to them, con- 
sent to be their slaves as they have been to us ? If we 
could not, it is manifest that this text is at open war with 
our author's views of slavery, and it is impossible to keep 
any of mankind in a state of unmerited, involuntary 
slavery, with conformity to it as a summary of the divine 
law. 

Arg. — 1. A late writer on the subject of moral science 
whose name in the literary world is distinguished by the 
initial ,Jetters of graduation, D. D., LL. D., asserts in 
one page of his lectures, that slavery is contrary both to 
justice and humanity, and that the African trade for slaves 
is among the most atrocious inroads upon justice and hu- 
manity which have ever been practised in any age or na- 
tion ; yet in the very next page he says, that neither justice 
nor humanity require that the master, who has become the 
innocent possessor of that property, should impoverish him- 
self for the benefit of his slaves. 

Answer. — It is impossible for a man to innocently pes. 
sess what he knows to have been stolen. The act of re- 
moving the Africans from their native country, is not that 
in which the peculiar aggravation of man-stealing lies, but 
it consists in robbing them of their liberty, labor, lime, and 
all their natural rights. If, then, the great sin of man- 
stealing lies in robbing men of all these, rather than in a 
violent removal of their persons from their native soil, it 
is impossible that another person, by paying a sum of 
money to purchase a right and power to continue the 
same robbery can be innocent, as if wickedness, by a 
mere transfer of the power of committing it, could by that 
remove of the agency become virtue. 

It is certain that when a man makes a purchase of a slave, 
he buys him, soul and body ; but it is obvious at first view 
that the soul and body, abstractly considered, are not 
the object of his purchase, but the man's time, liberty, labor, 
and all his natural rights are his chief objects, in order to 
make them serve his worldly interest, and this was the 
alone object the first man-thief had, when he removed him 
8 



86 PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS. 

soul and body from Africa ; therefore the man who pays 
his money to a slave trader for a slave, pays it for a pow- 
er to act and carry into operation the same thing, which 
was the alone motive the first man-thief had in view in 
stealing the man, and is that property of the whole trans- 
action which is most criminal. It is true that the man 
who buys a slave pays his money for him ; but it is also 
true that the first man-thief was at some expense to obtain 
him ; he spent his time, and risked his life, which are as 
valuable as money. 

2d. The first act of stealing the man, and the second 
act of holding him in bondage, when both are considered 
abstractly, will be found to be equally criminal ; but the 
last, when its circumstances and consequences are taken 
into view, will be found to be much the worst. The first 
act implied double robbery ; it was a violent separation of 
husbands from their wives, and wives from their husbands, 
parents from their children, and children from their pa- 
rents ; so that it implied double robbery, though one and 
the same transaction ; because in all cases wherein the 
husband is taken from the wife, the wife is taken from 
the husband, even though the local situation of the one re- 
mains stationary. The same holds true respecting the 
parents and children. But common slaveholding implies 
the same double robbery. As 

If an husband is purchased, and removed from his wife 
and children, he is then robbed from them, and his wife 
and children are equally robbed from him. The robbery 
is the same, whether the husband is by violence taken 
from his wife, or the wife from her husband, it is still 
double robbery ; and if the parents are sold from the 
children, or the children from the parents, it is robbery in 
relation to both, or double robbery. Let the crime, then, 
of man-stealing in the first instance be considered abstract 
from the mere local removal of their persons, and com- 
pared with common slaveholding, it will be found that the 
crime of stealing men from Africa and holding them in 
slavery in America, are essentially the same, and of equal 
aggravation ; their removal from their place of nativity 
in Africa, is no worse than their removal in America 
from their places of nativity, which is constantly done by 



THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENTS. 87 

slaveholders. But it has been already demonstrated that 
the common slaveholder is much more criminal in other 
respects than the first man-thicf ; the first only steals and 
sells the first generation, but obliges no purchaser to steal 
their children, yet slaveholders steal every child as soon 
as it is born, and entail the same theft upon their own pos- 
terity to all generations, and the same bondage upon the 
slaves and their children to the end of time. When the 
two citations from the doctor's book are compared, they 
exhibit a perfect paradox in the science of morals, and 
when further illustrated in the same lecture, tend to show 
and establish one of three things ; either that long habit 
or custom has a power of turning the most atrocious 
wickedness into virtue, or else that the most atrocious 
wickedness, by a transfer of the power of committing it, 
will turn it to virtue ; or that this hideous metamorphosis is 
effected by the sanction of civil authority ; all or any of 
which might have very consistently dropped from the pen 
of an infidel philosopher, some of whom have denied the 
existence of any law but the civil authority. But to come 
from tiie pen of a Christian divine, exhibits a character 
resembling- that beast that came up out of the earth, which 
had two horns like a lamb, but spake as a dragon. — Rev. 
xiii. 11. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ARGUMENT FR03I SCRIPTURE. 

Having now proved by a course of abstract reasoning, 
that slaveholding is sinful, we shall attempt to establish 
the same position from the Scriptures of the Old and New- 
Testament. 

The first portion of scripture to which the reader's at- 
tention is directed, is Job xxxi. 39. In this chapter, Job 
pleads his cause against the harsh insinuations of his 
friends. Let the 39th verse be compared with verse 13, 
in which he shows how equitably he dealt with his ser- 
vants. The two places, when compared, will show that 
the servants mentioned in the 13th verse, whose cause he 



38 THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENTS. 

vindicated, were hired-servants, and that he not only abhor- 
red the idea of slavery, but even called down the ven- 
geance of heaven upon his estate, if he exacted labor 
from his servants without wages, v. 39 : " If I have eaten 
the fruits of my land without money, or have caused the 
owners thereof to lose their life, let thistles grow instead 
of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." In chapter xxiv. 
Job gives the character of the wicked by their cruel op- 
pression of the poor, which comes precisely up to the 
practice of modern slaveholding. Verse 7 : " They 
cause the naked to lodge without covering in the cold, 
they are wet with the showers of the mountain, and em- 
brace the rock for want of shelter. They cause him to 
go naked without clothing, and take away the sheaf from 
the hungry, who make oil within their walls, and tread 
their wine presses and suffer thirst." It cannot be proved 
that slavery was sanctioned in the days of Job, by the 
laws of any state or kingdom, yet it appears to hvve been 
so far patronised by some petty tyrants, as to have the 
principal features of modern slavery ; such as that of mak- 
ing their domestics to go in a manner naked without 
clothing, so as to be exposed to the inclemency of the 
weather. It was also a practice with tyrannical masters 
to separate the children from the parents by violence : 
" They pluck the fatherless from the breast." To with- 
hold wages from the laborer, is called taking the sheaf 
from the hungry. They also withheld a due allowance of 
victualing, significantly expressed by oil, even when they 
made it within their walls, and withheld drink from them, 
though forced to tread their wine presses. All this cor- 
responds with the condition of slaves in our slave states, 
many of whom suffer hunger, thirst, and nakedness, amidst 
the abundant fruits of their own labor. 

Ex. xxi. 16 : " He that stealeth a man and selleth him, 
or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to 
death." Though this divine command was given to the 
people of Israel, it is moral, and proceeds upon the same 
principle with that prohibition in the decalogue, " Thou 
shalt not steal." 

So Paul, with reference to this, says — " The law is not 
made for a rig^hteous man. but for murderers of fathers, 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 8ft 

and murderers of mothers, for man-stealers, for liars, for 
perjured personA" Man-slealing is here classed with 
such crimes as are most detestable in the sight of God, 
and most odious in the sight of men, and most deserving 
of death by the sword of justice. Man-stealing must 
therefore be a moral evil of the most aggravated nature. 
in every oge and in every nation. A sin not only against 
God, but against our neighbor. If he who steals a sheep, 
or robs on the highway, may be considered a pest to soci- 
ety, of whit enormous villany must he be guilty who steals 
or robs a man of all his property, or which is the same 
thing, takes a man by violence from all his properly. The 
crime of theft docs not so much lie in using stolen proper- 
ty, as in depriving the right owner of the use and enjoy- 
ment of it. But slaveholding deprives the man of all his 
property, and from the liberty of ever possessing more, 
and has some circumstances of aggravation and horror 
peculiar to itself, as that of robbing wives from their hus- 
bands, and husbands from their wives, children from their 
parents, and separating children from one another. But 
although these near relatives should not be separated from 
one another, yet it implies all the criminality of robbery 
of the highest aggravation, because all natural relations 
which exist amongst slaves, with all relative duties, are at 
the disposal of the slave master, who is absolute lord over 
all these relations and relative duties; in consequence of 
which, every child that is born of a slave, even though it 
is suffered to live in the same house with its parents, is 
robbed from them ; that is, the rights of all relative du- 
ties are by violence taken away and usurped by the mas- 
ter. But what is the most criminal of all is, that the slave 
master, by his last will, gives his posterity a charter to 
continue the practice of man-stealing, to perpetual gene- 
rations. 

Lev. xix. 13: " Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor 
neither rob him ; the wages of him that is hired shall not 
abide with thee until the morning." But slaveholding im- 
plies both fraud and robbery. It is a robbing our neighbor 
of his liberty, his time, and his labor. If to defraud an 
hireling of his wages is theft and robbery, how much ra- 
ther is slaveholding, that not only robs a man of wages lor 
8* 



90 THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENTS, 

his labor, but of his liberty, his cliildren, and all his rela- 
tives of their right of duty to them, and the right of obe- 
dience from them ; and the worst of all is, a robbing 
them of that time which they ought to devote to the ser- 
vice of God ; so that the slave has no lime to learn to 
know his duty to God, nor leisure to serve him, or to pre- 
pare for eternity. 

Verse 33 : " And if a stranger sojourn with you in 
your land, ye shall not vex him ; but the stranger that 
dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among 
you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were Strang- 
ers in the land of Egypt," Strangers and sojourners 
among the Jews were all the heathen nations ; so that this 
text absolutely prohibited the Jews from enslaving the 
heathen who dwelt among them and enjoyed their protec 
tion, much more to enslave those heathen who were living 
within their own borders, and seeking no protection. 

Ex. xxiii. 9 : " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye 
know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in 
the land of Egypt." That oppressing strangers means 
enslaving them, is evident from the reference had to their 
bondage in Egypt ; so that this prohibits slavery among 
the Jews. 

Levit. XXV. 35 : " If thy brother be waxen poor, and fall 
into decay with thee, thou shalt relieve him ; yea, though 
he be a stranger or sojourner, that he may live with thee." 
This is the very reverse of what is practised in slave 
states. Not only brethren of mankind, but brethren in 
Christian fellowship are enslaved; that is, robbed of time, 
liberty, labor, and all the rights of men ; and whosoever 
will attempt to relieve them, must needs be fenced with 
iron, and the staff of a spear. 

Jer. xxii. 13 : " Woe unto him thatbuildeth his house by 
unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth 
his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not 
for his work. This last is so directly pointed against un- 
merited, involuntary slavery, as to require no comment. 

In the former part of this work it has been shown that 
slavery never was authorised among the Jews by the di- 
vine law, that although the law admitted of bond-men and 
bond-women, yet their bondage was so restricted as to 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 91 

prevent it from being intolerable. It has also been shown 
that it was confined to captives taken in war, to criminals 
and debtors ; and we may now add, in connection with 
what has been said on the cause of the Gibeonites, that all 
public national servants, which the law of God allowed 
of among the Jews, were to be exclusively of the seven 
nations of Canaan, which God, by a special revelation of 
his will, consigned over lo destruction for their atrocious 
wickedness. Deut. ii. 5, 9. I Kings, ix. 20, 22 : " Ail 
the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Periz- 
zites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which were not of the child, 
ren of Israel, that were left after them in the land, whom 
the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, 
upon these did King Solomon levy a tribute of bond-men 
unto this day. But of the children of Israel did Solomon 
make no bond-men, but they were men of war, and his 
servants, and his princes, and his captains, and rulers of 
his chariots, and his horsemen." Whence it appears that 
these bond-men were not contrasted with the natural rights 
of humanity, as in our slave states, but with military ser- 
vice and other honorable employments in the state. These 
bond-men, like the Gibeonites, were public national pro- 
perty, the same as enlisted soldiers, but not the private 
property of individuals ; and as their bondage could not 
have been supposed to be intolerable, were liable to serve 
to the year of jubilee, except they became proselytes to 
the Jewish religion. But whatever institutions God gave 
to the Jews which bound them as his own peculiar people, 
to deal justly and mercifully to one another, are now 
equally binding upon the whole world ; and all positive 
precepts which allowed the Jews to serve themselves by 
either the persons or property of any heathen nations, are 
now done away by the coming of Christ. 

Eph. ii. 11 : " Wherefore, remember that ye, being in 
time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircum- 
cision by that which is called the circumcision in the 
flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without 
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and 
strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope, 
and wiihoul God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, 
ye who some time were afar off, are now made nigh by 



92' THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENTS. 

the blood of Christ, for he is our peace who hath made 
both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of par- 
tition between us." Col. i. 20 : " And having made 
peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all 
things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things 
in earth or things in heaven." From these passages it 
appears, that all the peculiarities of the Jewish dispensa- 
tion are done away ; so that all moral precepts which for- 
bade the Jews to oppress, enslave, or sell one another, 
are equally binding upon all mankind. As the Jews 
were called in Scripture language brethren, whether they 
were gracious persons or unbelievers, so under the gospel 
dispensation are all mankind on account of the Gentile na- 
tions enjoying the same privileges which aforetime were 
restricted to the Jews, to the exclusion of the Gentiles. 
All the Gentiles are said to be reconciled to God, because 
the middle wall of partition is taken down. In strict 
agreement with the Scriptures above cited, the words ad- 
dressed to the Jews, will condemn our modern dealers in 
the souls and bodies of men. 

Amos viii. 5, 6 : " Falsifying the balance by deceit, that 
ye may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a 
pair of shoes," Chap. ii. 6 : " Thus saith the Lord, for 
three transgressions of Israel, and for four I will not turn 
away the punishment thereof, because they sold the right- 
eous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes." Eccl. 
iv. 1. "So 1 returned and considered all the oppressions 
that are done under the sun, and behold the tears of such 
as were oppressed, and they had no comfort ; and on the 
side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no 
comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are al- 
ready dead, more than the living who are yet alive." 
That these words were designed to display the miserable 
condition of persons in a slate of abject slavery similar to 
what is practised in our slave states can hardly be call- 
ed in question by any that will be at pains to compare his 
words with the condition of slaves. As 

First. — These which he saw and considered were over- 
whelmed with grief and despair. 

Secondly. — They were subject to unjust and arbitrary 
power, because those who had the rule over them he calls 
oppressors. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 98 

Thirdly. — They were in that condition as to be out of 
the reach of any ordinary merns of relief, for on the side 
of their oppressors there was power. 

Foujthly. — Their condition was so wretched that he 
praised the state of the dead in comparison with theirs. 
The whole is so completely descriptive of modern slavery, 
that had the inspired writer designed at the time to give 
a true delineation of the real condition of slaves in our 
slave states, b.e could not have done it with more exact- 
ness. 

We shall now state some arguments from the New Tes- 
tament. Matt, vii, 12: " Therefore all things whatsoev- 
er ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so 
to them, for this is the law and the prophets." Chap, 
xxii. 37-40 : " Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with ail thy heart and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. 
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself; on these two commandments hang all the 
law and the prophets." All men are our neighbors. To 
love our neighbors as ourselves is to study his interest as 
well as our own, and in no respect to sacrifice his welfare 
for the advancement of our own, but slaveholding can 
have no existence without sacrificing all the rights and 
privileges of the slave for the advantage of the master. 

James v. 1, 6 : "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and 
howl for the miseries that shall come upon you. Your 
riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten, 
your gold and silver is cankered, and the rest of them 
shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as 
it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the 
last day. Behold the hire of the laborers who have reap- 
ed down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud 
crieth, and the cries of them who have escaped are enter- 
ed into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." That the labor- 
ers here who are defrauded of their hire or just wages 
were slaves and not hirelings, is evident, 

First. — Because slavery was then universal throughout 
the Roman empire, and the twelve tribes of Israel to whom 
the apostle addressed his epistle, were scattered abroad 
throughout the whole empire, which was then all the 
known world. 



94 THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. 

Secondly. — Keeping back the hire is spoken of as a gen- 
eral evil, which could not have been if the ground of com- 
plaint had been no more than that of rich men withholding 
stipulated wages from their laborers, because such a prac- 
tice could not have been universal, while every hireling 
had the half of the bargain to make; and a general prac^ 
tice of defrauding hirelings would have prevented hiring 
altogether ; — therefore these rich men must have been 
slave holders, and the laborers that reaped down their 
fields were slaves, whom they defrauded of their wages, 
John viii. 35 : '' And the servanta bideth not in the house 
forever, but the son abideth forever." In these words 
Christ could not have meant to compare the local resi- 
dence of a servant with that of a son, for it was a privi- 
lege granted to a son from the beginning, that he should 
leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife. 
Therefore Christ's design in the illustration of his sub- 
ject was, to compare the temporary relation of a servant 
to his master, with that of a son to his father, which is 
perpetual. The servant abideth. If perpetual heredita- 
ry slavery had ^been allowed among the JewL«, the com- 
parison would have been perfectly unnatural, so that this 
text is a plain proof that perpetual slavery had no exist- 
ence in the Jewish nation. 

Rev. xviii. 8-13 : In this chapter trafficking in slaves is 
pointed out as one criminal mark of the great whore of 
Babylon, where her articles of commerce are specified, 
some of which consisted of slaves and souls of men. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. 

Objection. — If slaveholding is criminal, why did not 
Christ preach up the emancipation of slaves ? 

Answer. — Christ did testify against slavery in the very 
first sermon he delivered, where he publicly announced 
his mediatorial office. Luke iv. 18. His subject was 
from Isaiah, chapter 1 : — '* The spirit of the Lord God is 
upon me, because he hath annointed me to preach the gos- 
pel to the poor ; he has sent me to heal the broken heart- 



THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. "95 

ed, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." These ex- 
pressions, broken heart.d, blind, bruised, are figurative of 
the different kinds and degrees of misery in which man- 
kind are involved by sin, from whicii they need deliver- 
ance through a mediator; but those strong figures are not 
taken from those kinds of miseries or punishments under 
which persons are lawfully held for their crimes. It is in 
every instance unlawful to relieve the guilty from deserv- 
ed punishment, but those figures are taken from miseries 
in which persons are unjustly held by cruel tyranny, and 
certain it is that no people are subject to so hopeless and 
so unjust a captivity as those that are detained in a state of 
unmerited slavery, none kept in greater blindness, none 
more subject to be beaten, bruised and murdered. As 
Christ then, by the use and application of these figures, 
shews what was the great object of his mission into the 
world at a time when slavery was universal throughout 
the Roman empire, while two thirds of the population 
were slaves, we may conclude that one branch of his me- 
diatorial office, was the emancipation of mankind from 
civil and political bondage, as well as spiritual. Had Christ 
made choice of a number of figures taken from those 
civil punishments under which criminals are justly held, 
it would have conveyed an idea that he came to destroy 
the law rather than to fulfil it. Man's punishment for sin 
is just in relation to God. but in many instances mankind 
are subject to unjust punishment in relation to one anoth- 
er. Christ's office as mediator was to fulfil the law, to 
deliver sinners from condemnation in relation to God's 
law, and from unjust punishment in relation to men and 
the power of Satan : the design of the gospel is to proclaim 
to mankind, sinners' deliverance from the guilt ot sin, and 
for freedom from spiritual bondage, and to enlighten the 
nations of the earth, as to bring about their freedom from 
civil and political bondage. That the end of Christ's 
office was thus extensive is more copiously expressed in 
the next verse : " To proclaim the acceptable year of the 
Lord." This expression relates to the great jubilee, which 
was a general release from all debts, mortgages and ser- 



96 THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. 

vitudes. That a release from all these bonds was just, 
and to have detained persons under bonds longer than the 
year of jubilee, would have been unjust, is evident from 
these reasons. 

First. — It was the command of God that such release 
should be. 

Second. — All their contracts were made in accommoda- 
tion to the year of jubilee. 

Third. — The general release which was proclaimed in 
the jubilee was typical of the coming of Christ, whose 
office was to proclaim liberty to all that are in spiritual 
bondage, and to open a way for deliverance to all that 
are unjustly detainedjin temporal bondage. That this is the 
sense of the words, is manifest from the particular kind 
of freedom, which was implied in the jubilee ; it was a 
freedom from servitude, so that no person could be de- 
tained in bondage longer than to that period. Every 
part of the typical service must have been founded upon 
moral justice, and in no respect contrary to it. A release 
from bondage in the year of jubilee was typical of that 
liberty which Christ came to proclaim, therefore it must 
have been just to release all servants from bondage in the 
year of jubilee, and to have detained them would have 
been unjust; that which w^as unjust in a moral point of 
view, under the Old Testament, is equally unjust under the 
New ; for Christ came not to destroy the law. If the 
typical law secured the emancipation of all such as were 
held in bondage, the ante-type must do the same, for we 
cannot expect the ante-type to fall short of the type. 

The proclamation of the jubilee under the Old Testa- 
ment, was to the Jews, as the Gospel is to all nations un- 
der the New, the middle wall of partition being broken 
down by the coming of Christ ; so that Christ in his pub- 
lie administrations established a foundation for the univer- 
sal emancipation of slaves. Matth. vii. 12: "All things 
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you 
even so to them." Christ and his apostles laid down the 
gospel before sinners as a ground of salvation, and also 
the preceptive obligations of the moral law as a rule of 
duty, explained it and enforced its authority, so as by ne- 
cessary implication to condemn slaveholding, allowing 



THE DUTY OF THE SLAVE. 



9t 



their hearers to make an application of the general prin- 
ciples of moral justice to particular cases. But the con- 
dition of the Christian church is entirely different in the 
present age, and in this country from that of the apostoli- 
cal age. The great end of the gospel in the apostolical age 
was not in the first instance to deliver mankind from cor- 
poreal bondage, and to restore them to the enjoyment of 
civil privileges, but to deliver them from the guilt and 
bondage of sin, which would prepare the way for deliver- 
ance from political bondage. In that age, all nations 
were under the Roman yoke. To have preached a uni- 
versal emancipation of slaves in the apostolical age, 
would have been the same as to have attempted an over- 
throw of the empire ; but in the present age and in our 
nation, the preachers of the gospel are bound to address 
mankind in a manner adapted to their present condition 
as professed Christians and freemen, who are acquainted 
with God's law, and its obligations upon all men — to a 
people also, who are themselves the constituents of govern- 
ment, and have an active hand in making the constitution 
and all the laws of government. Men under the Roman 
government might have been either masters or slaves 
without criminality, while masters were bound to pay wages 
to their slaves, as will be afterwards shown. But it is 
impossible for men to hold persons in slavery under our 
government, without the grossest criminality, because the 
principles upon which we maintain our own liberty and 
independence, and the ground upon which we make laws 
to promote justice and equity between man and man, 
strike at the very root of slaveholding, and condemn it 
to the lowest hell. 



CHAPTER VII. 
OF THE DUTY OF A SLAVE TO HIS MASTER. 

A slave while he remains with his master, owes obe- 
dience to him, and as long as he remains under his autho- 
rity is bound to honor him, not because of any moral 
right that the master has to hold him in bondage but be- 
9 



98 SLAVES AND SERVANTS. 

cause of the benefits he receives from him. Although 
he is a despot, yet in virtue of the laws of the state, he 
is all the civil magistrate the slave has to protect him 
against dangers, and is his benefactor to feed and clothe 
him. For these reasons he is as much bound to obey 
and honor his master, as the subjects of any other tyrant 
are bound to obey and honor their tyrant while they en- 
joy his protection ; and while Providence has presented 
no way of immediate relief, no essential difference can 
be found between the relation of a slave to his despotical 
master, and the relation of subjects to a despotical king. 
Agreeable to this view of the subject the Scripture requir- 
ed Christians to be subject to the Roman Emperor and 
his subordinate governors. 1 Peter, ii. 13: "Submit 
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, 
whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors 
as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of 
evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well." The 
apostle continues his exhortation to some length, when he 
presently recognizes the duty of servants to masters. 
Verse 18: " Servants be subject to your masters with all 
fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the fro- 
ward," but he gives not the least insinuation of the Emper. 
or's power over them being just, neither anything to re- 
cognize the authority of a froward master as lawful. So 
that the same natural right which the Roman subjects 
had to emancipate themselves from their despotical yoke, 
the servants of despotical masters have to emancipate 
themselves from their yoke, that is, when Divine provi- 
dence presents a fair opportunity. 

Slavery, virtue dreads it as her grave, 

Patience itself is meanness in a slave ; 

Yet if the vi^ill and sovereignty of God, 

Bids suffer it avi^hile and kiss the rod, 

Wait for the dawning of a better day, 

And snap the chain the moment when you may. 

1 Cor. vii. 21 : '* Art thou called, being a servant, 
care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made free, use it 
rather ; he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is 
the Lord's free man." The word here translated ser- 
vant, is doulosj which signifies either a slave or an hired 



SLAVES AND SERVANTS. 99 

servant. His saying, " If thou mayest be made free, use 
it rather," may apply to a hired servant whose worldly 
condition might require him to occupy the station of a 
servant. If it should he contendt-d that the term in the 
original is appliccible to a slave rather than to a hired 
servant, the apostle's admonition, " If thou mayest be 
made free use it rather," will go to condemn slavehold- 
ing. Because if it is just to retain a person in a state of 
slavery, that person has no power of choice, neither could 
it be his duty to attempt to b-e free, more than for a minor 
or an apprentice to attempt to obtain freedom from his 
lawful guardian or master ; but if this or any other apos- 
tolical admonition relative to servants should be so con- 
strued as to require slaves to obey their masters, it can 
mean no other than a patient submission to an unlavv'ful 
yoke, while they could have no prospect of immediate 
relief. 

Eph. vi. 5 — 9 : " Servants be obedient to them that are 
your masters according to the flesh ; not with eye service 
as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the 
will of God from the heart with good will, doing service 
as unto the Lord, and not to men ; knowing that what- 
soever good any man doeth, the same shall he receive of 
the Lord, whether he be bond or free." The original 
word translated servants is douloi^ which will signify 
either slaves or voluntary servants, as appears from the 
very next verse where the same word is used to express 
the condition of true believers who are called the douloi, 
the servants of Christ. It v.'ould sound rather harsh to 
call believers the slaves of Christ; that the term may sig- 
nify either slaves or voluntary servants is evident from 
the promiscuous use of it in the Scriptures, where it is 
often applied to hired servants, as in Luke xv. 22; 
Matlh. xiii. 27, 28; xviir. 23, 28. That the word 
here means voluntary servants, is further evident 
from the duties enjoined upon masters. Eph, vi. 9 : "And 
ye masters do the same things unto them forbearing 
threatening, knowing that your master is in heaven. 
Neither is there respect of persons with him." Three 
things are inculcated in these words. The first is, the 
duty of paying wages to servants after he had directed 



100 SLAVES AND SERVANTS. 

servants to be faithful in serving their masters, he imme- 
diately directs masters to do the same things unto them, 
which cannot mean the same forms of service, but it must 
imply just and equitable returns to them for their service, 
or equitable wages. A second thing inculcated in these 
words, is, that masters should forbear threatening, which 
may be done in the government of hirelings, but not in 
that of slavery. The third thing is, impartiality in their 
behavior towards them, signified by the last clause of the 
verse — " Neither is there respect of persons with him." 
But to hold men in a state of unmerited bondage, is the 
utmost extreme of partiality. 

That all apostolical directions to servants to be obedient 
to their masters respected voluntary servants, and not 
slaves, is manifest from one special reason. That is, that 
in general, where obedience to masters is enjoined upon 
servants, obedience in children to their parents is also en- 
joined, which shews that the servants specified in those 
injunctions were voluntary servants, and not slaves, for if 
all children without exception are bound by command of 
God, to obey their parents, and all parents are in duty 
bound to instruct and govern their families, it is impossi- 
ble that the authority of the slaveholder can be lawful, 
when it of necessity contravenes the authority of the 
slave parents to command, and the power of the slave 
children to obey. That the reader may perceive the force 
of this argument, let him read the verses which precede 
the words we have had under consideration. Col. iii. 22.: 
" Servants obey in all things your masters according to 
the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sin- 
gleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, 
do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing 
that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the in- 
heritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ." That these 
directions have a strict relation to the common servants 
and not to slaves, is evident from his classing the duties 
of servants with the natural duties of husbands and wives, 
parents and children. That command which binds chil- 
dren to obey their parents in all things as a duty well- 
pleasing in the sight of the Lord is incompatible with 
slavery; therefore the words in the 22d verse cannot 



SLAVES AND SERVANTS. lUl 

have a respect to slave.'?, without contradicting the obli- 
gations laid upon parents and children in the preceding 
verses. That the apostle's injunction refers to voluntary 
servants and not to slaves, is further evident from his in- 
junction upon masters in the beginning of the next chap- 
ter. Verse 1: ''Masters give unto your servants that 
which is just and equal, knowing th^t you have a master 
in heaven." Masters are here commanded to give unto 
their servants that which is just ; that is, a reward for their 
labor; and equal, which requires the wages to be proper- 
tionate to their labor. If these servants were even slaves, 
and rendered incapable by the Roman laws of being 
made free, this command would have bound the masters 
to pay them wages equal to their labor. 

1 Tim. vi. 1 : " Let as many servants as are under the 
yoke, count their own masters worthy of all honor, that 
the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed ; and 
they that have believing masters let them not despise 
them, because they are brethren, but rather do them ser- 
vice, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers 
of the benefit." The expression, servants under the 
yoke, may signify hired servants, or any peisons that are 
under any bond or obligation to serve others; yet con- 
sidering that slavery in the apostle's time was universal 
throughout the world, the duties inculcated in the text, 
may relate to slaves, without contradicting anything that 
has been advanced against the practice of slaveholding. 
Tliis w'ill appear from two o'eneral reasons. The first is 
that all the subjects of the Roman empire were in a man- 
ner slaves, their lives and property so completely under 
the power of the emperor and other subordinate tyrants 
that none were free; so that the state of common slaves 
could have hardly been worse than that of their masters. 

Secondly. — The apostle knew well the obstacles which 
would have prevented a general emancipation of slaves, 
to wif, the Roman law. He also knew that ^ew masters 
would be disposed to keep slaves, pay them wages, and be 
responsible for their conduct, longer than the laws of the 
empire would admit of their freedom. Therefore, he 
more immediately enjoined upon Christians the duty of 
paying ihem just and equitable wages, than to liberate 
9* 



102 SLAVES AND SERVANTS. 

them, in direct contradiction to the laws of government. 
The reason which is added to excite servants to be obe- 
dient to their believing masters, is properly opposed to 
slavery, because they are faithful ; which intimates faith, 
fulness in paying them wages, as well as beloved for their 
humane treatment, and partakers of the benefit, that is, of 
the profits arising from their labor. A servant that re- 
ceives wages may be faithful and diligent in his master's 
service, and the benefits redounding to his master from 
his labor may be a motive of encouragement to greater 
diligence and faithfulness ; but we can hardly expect that 
a person who receives no compensalion for his labor, can 
view the prosperity of his master, and the profits arising 
from his labor as motives of encouragement. 

What Paul writes to Philemon respecting Onesimus, is 
so far from countenancing slavery, as some would have 
it, that it operates against it. That Onesimus was a ser- 
vant of Philemon, was evident ; but whether he was a 
hireling, a servant for debt, or a minor, is not said. 
That he could not be a slave, is manifest from Paul's 
speaking of him as being then free from any obligation 
to be subject to Philemon in the character of a servant, 
and admonishes him to receive him, not as a servant, but 
as a son. If it is a moral duty to keep men in a state of 
slavery, a slave becoming a convert to Christianity can- 
not lay the master under an obligation to set him free, 
more than a minor or son, professing Christianity, will 
loose him from his obligation to serve and obey his father. 
Gal. iv. 1 : " The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth 
nothing from a servant." If it is true, that a master must 
emancipate his slave upon his professing Christianity, 
while previous to that, the moral law made it his duty to 
keep him in perpetual bondage, it will suppose that Christ 
came to destroy the law, or which is the same thing, to 
loose men from its obligation. Phil. 18 : " If he hath 
wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine 
account." The insinuation, if he hath wronged thee, is a 
plain intimation that Paul did not consider him as a slave 
who had departed from his master ; for if Philemon had 
held him as his lawful slave, his departure could be no 
matter of hesitation whether he had wronged him by run- 



ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY. 103 

ning away ; therefore, when Paul said, " If he hath wrong- 
ed thee," he insinuates that there might have been some 
part of his time that, as a servant, he had not fulfilled. " If 
he oweth thee aught." This is another insinuation that he 
could not be a slave, for slaves are not apt to owe sums 
of money to their masters. His saying, ''Put that on mine 
account," is a further evidence that Onesimus was not a 
slave, for we have no reason to think that Paul, who was 
then a prisoner, could have wherewith to purchase his 
freedom. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY. 

The arguments in favor of slavery are mostly drawn 
from four resources. 

First, — From the Scriptural accounts we have of bond- 
men and bond maids, servants under the yoke, and the 
obedience which is so strictly and repeatedly enjoined 
upon them. All this no person denies, but it in no re- 
spect affects the matter in dispute. It is involuntary, un- 
merited, hereditary slavery which we condemn, and which 
no Scripture will justify, as has already been shown ; and 
further, if slavery had never been practised in the world 
since the creation, all these texts which enjoin the duties 
of servants to their masters, could have their full and 
direct application to minor servants and hirelings, to such 
as might be subject to bondage for their crimes or for 
debt. Then, can any one of them be taken for a vindi- 
cation of slavery 1 

Secondly. — Some plead for slavery from the decrees of 
God and his foreknowledge. But to attempt to prove 
any doctrine or practice on that principle, would justify 
the Jews in crucifying Jesus Christ. The moral law is 
our rule of duty, and not any thing pertaining to the 
secret will or foreknowledge of God. 

Thirdly. — Some plead for slavery from Noah's curse 
pronounced upon the posterity of Ham, but it is not un- 
favorable to the cause of freedom that the prophetic curse 



104 ARGUirI£iSlS iN FAS^OR OF SLAVERY. 

was denounced against Canaan only ; and it is evident 
from the best authorities, that neither he nor his posterity 
settled in Africa. It is also a fact that African slavery 
only commenced between two and three centuries ago. 
But suppose African slavery was an accomplishment of 
that prophetic curse, it will no more justify the agency of 
men in the fulfilment of the prediction, than God's denun- 
ciation of vengeance on the Jews would justify the King of 
Babylon in executing that threatening. 

Fourthly. — Slaveholding is justified by some on the 
ground of Christian experience. The argument runs 
thus. We hope we have been convinced of sin, and have 
obtained forgiveness through Jesus Christ ; and amidst all 
our convictions, we never saw that slaveholding was a 
sin. Therefore we cannot think it wrong to retain them 
in bondage, provided we use them well. But such as use 
this argument in favor of slavery show that they have 
never been either truly convinced or converted, because 
all such take their own feelings and inward frames for 
their rule of duty, which none can do without undervaluing 
the word of God. Isaiah viii. 20 : " To the law and to 
the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, 
it is because there is no light in them." 

2. There are many who have been convinced of sin, 
and shown hopeful signs of forgiveness, gone far in re- 
ligion, stood long, professed great zeal, acquired much 
knowledge, been in high esteem among Christians, and 
done much for the church of Christ, with whom the work 
of conversion never was genuine ; so that this argument 
is destitute of moral right. 

Objection. — If a general emancipation of the slaves was 
to take place, intermarriages between the whites and the 
blacks would be an unavoidable consequence. 

Answer. — It is granted this might be the consequence, 
yet it would be much better that it should be so than worse. 
As matters now stand, a mixture of color is rapidly in- 
creasing by means of illicit embraces, much more than 
could be expected by lawful marriages, if they were all 
free and independent, for which two reasons may be as. 
signed. The first is, that if they were free they would be 
liable to improve by means of religious and moral in- 



REAL CONDITION OF SLAVEHOLDERS. 105 

struction, as well as the white population ; which would 
have the same tendency to prevent irregular practices. A 
second reason is, that if they were all free and independ- 
ent, they would be no longer subjecl to the lawless power 
of despotical masters, who can, without restraint, compel 
their female slaves to become their prostitutes when ihey 
please. The force of this argument is evinced by facts. 
The city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, contains about 
20,000 free blacks ; yet the mixture of color, as to num. 
bers, bears no proportion to that in slave states. 



CHAPTER X. 

OF THE REAL CONDITION OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN RELATION 
'*T0 THE JUSTICE OF GOD. 

It has been shown that involuntary, unmerited, hered- 
itary slavery, has nothing to justify it in the Scripture, 
but is condemned by both the Old and New Testaments. 
That it is so directly contrary to the moral law, and the 
natural rights of man, as to embrace twenty-nine points 
of the grossest criminality. If, then, any one sin per- 
sisted in, without repentance, will expose the sinner to 
the Divine displeasure, and subject him to the vengeance 
of eternal fire, what shall we say of a practice which 
involves in it all the abominations condemned by the 
moral law ; so that whatsoever is motst dishonorable to 
God, and destructive to the souls of men, is a most pro- 
minent feature in the practice of slaveholding ; therefore, 
except the character of God should change, the moral 
law be destroyed, and those Scriptures become untrue 
which testify that except we cut off right hand sins, and 
pluck out right eye sins, we cannot enter the kingdom of 
God. It is impossible that a person living and dying in 
the practice of slaveholding can enter that kingdom, but 
must, according to the Scripture, be consigned over to 
that region from which there is no redemption ; and all 
those who are implicated in that sin, and persist in the 
practice, are now treasuring up wrath against the day of 
wrath, and just judgment of ungodly men. 



106 REAL CONDITION OF SLAVEHOLDERS. 

It has been shown that slaveholders are most flagrant 
breakers of all the ten commandments ; in particular, that 
every individual of that class, by virtue of his office and- 
station, independent of his treatment of the slaves, usurps 
the place of God, and even exalts himself above him, by 
contravening the authority of his law in relation to his 
slaves. He has authority to intercept and prevent all 
the duties which the slave owes to God, to which God 
has a prior right, and to intercept all the duties which the 
slave-parents and their children reciprocally owe to one 
another ; that it implies a power of separating those whom 
God has joined together ; that it implies the highest pos- 
sible degrees of theft and robbery, the sin of perjury, with 
a violation of all other precepts of the moral lav/. There- 
fore, the curse of God, denounced against all his incorri- 
gible enemies, must fall upon them at that tribunal, where 
every one shall receive a reward according to the deeds 
done in the body. He shall have judgment without mer- 
cy, who sheweth no mercy. Zech. v. 2, 3 : " And he said 
unto me, what seest thou. And I answered, 1 see a fly- 
ing roll ; the length is twenty cubits, and the breadth 
thereof ten cubits. Then said he unto me. this is the 
curse that goeth over the face of the whole earth, for 
every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side 
according to it ; and every one that sweareth falsely shall 
be cut off as on that side. And I will bring it forth, saith 
the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the 
thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by 
mine name ; and it shall remain in the midst of his house, 
and shall consume it, with the timber thereof, and the 
stones thereof." Mai. iii. 5 : " And I will come near to 
you. to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the 
sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false 
swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in 
his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn 
aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith 
the Lord of hosts." 

" Is there not some chosen curse, 
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, 
Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man, 
Who gains his fortune from the blood of souls." 

COWPER; 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 107 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 

First. — Christians, in a religious point of view, ought 
to have no church fellowship with slaveholders. 2 Cor. 
vi. 14, 18 : " Bo ye not unequally yoked together with 
unbelievers ; for what fellowship hath righteousness with 
unrighteousness, and what conamunion hath light with 
darkness, and what concord hath Christ with Belial, or 
what part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? Where- 
fore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, 
saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I 
will receive you." But, 

Secondly. — To consider the duty of Christians in a civil 
point of view. The practice of slaveholding in a slave 
state need not deter emancipators or others from the 
privilege of votinsj for candidates to the legislative bodies, 
or from using their best endeavors to have men placed in 
office that will be favorable to the cause of freedom, and 
who may be best qualified to govern the state or com- 
monwealth; but it ought to prevent any from officiating 
as a magistrate, when his commission authorizes him to 
issue a warrant to apprehend the slave when he is guihy 
of no other crime than that of running away from unmer- 
ited bondage. 

If it is a transgression of the moral law to keep men 
in unmerited bondage, while they have no protection from 
the civil law, to secure to them their other natural rights, 
it is a Gfreat duty in the slaves to make their escape as 
soon as Divine providence gives them an opportunity. On 
this ground it is impossible for any one to hinder or pre- 
vent their escape, without flying in the face of the moral 
law. It is impossible for the moral law to make it duty in 
the slave to escape, and the duty of a magistrate to pre- 
vent his escape ; it would suppose the moral law to be at 
war with itself. It can be no just apology for a magis- 
trate in that case that he is bound by his oath to do it, 
because no human obligation, whether by the civil law, 
oath, or promise, can make it duty for any one to trangress 



103 THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS 

the moral law. If a commission from government, and 
an oath of office will make it duty in any one instance to 
trangress the moral law, it might, on the same principle, 
make it a duty for the son to kill his father, though per- 
fectly innocent ; or curse, swear, or blaspheme the name 
of God, or to fall down and worship a golden image. 

Thirdly, — The practice of slaveholding being protected 
by the laws of the commonwealth, will prevent any one, 
who has the fear of God before his eyes, from acting as a 
sheriff or constable in apprehending a runaway slave, and 
prevent all conscientious persons from obeying the com- 
mand of either squire, sheriff, or constable, or any other 
officer of government who might demand assistance to 
apprehend a runaway slave, except he was guihy of some 
other crime. 

Fourthly. -~\i will condemn the business of advertising, 
or assisting in setting up advertisements for the purpose 
of apprehending runaway negroes, or to take them up, 
either for a reward, or without it. 

If the people of Israel, under the Old Testament, who 
had no slaves of that description we have under consid- 
eration, were prohibited from taking up a servant who had 
escaped from his master, how much more aggravating 
must the sin and cruelty be, of taking up an innocent 
person, who has only attempted to enjoy his natural and 
lawful rights, by escaping from his master, who exercised 
a lawless power over him, and had no right, by the law of 
God, to detain him one hour. That the people of Israel 
were prohibited by divine authority from taking up and 
delivering a servant to his master, is proved from Deut. 
xxiii. 15,16; Prov. xxx. 10. 

Fifthly. — It will condemn the practice of hiring slaves 
from their masters. In that case, the master delegates his 
power over the slave to the employer for the time specified ; 
the employer is then the master's representative, and has 
the same power to compel the slave to labor, and to re- 
strain him from his natural rights, as the master had, and 
is for the time agreed upon, his real master ; therefore, his 
authority over the slave must be as really criminal as the 
master's, or as that of an officer of a persecuting tyrant, 
who executes the laws of his despotical sovereign upon the 



RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 100 

persons of those who risk their lives and fortunes for the 
cause of God. 

Sixthly. — According to the laws of slave states, it would 
be impossible for men to act as jurors, consistent with duty 
in a case depending between a master and his slave, if the 
crime was no other than that of the slave quitting his mas- 
ter's service. In such a trial the juror is bound to bring 
in a true verdict according to law and evidence. The law 
there meant is that relating to slaves, but no jury in such 
a case could determine the cause in favor of the m.aster, 
without contradicting the moral law. They could not de- 
cide it in favor of the slave without incurring the guilt of 
perjury. The case would be entirely different, if the laws 
of slave states would protect the slaves in the enjoyment of 
all their natural rights, with the exception of their labor 
only. The jury might then determine the cause in favor 
of the master, because all the evil to which the slave would 
be subject, would be of a penal nature ; but when we con- 
sider that the slaves have no protection while they live 
from either law or government, but are completely outlaw- 
ed, and exposed to the most cruel insults without redress, 
wives and daughters subject to the will of their lascivious 
masters, without the privilege of a legal complaint, and 
their posterity, to perpetual generations, placed in the same 
horrible condition. It appears self-evident that they are 
not only in duty bound to embrace the first favorable oppor- 
tunity to escape from their tyrants, but it would be criminal 
to neglect it, so that no jury could decide such a cause 
against the slave without contracting great guilt and in- 
curring damnation. 

Seventhly. — Should the slaves in a slave state rise in re- 
bellion against their tyrants for the cause of liberty, the free 
inhabitants of that slate would be as much forbidden by the 
moral law to take up arms to suppress that insurrection, 
as they are forbidden to assault and murder any of their 
innocent neighbors and all such as might actually fight 
in such a cause, in open hostility to moral justice and the 
rights of man, would be real murderers ; and should any 
thus engaged in such a contest against the innocent be 
slain, they must inevitably sink to the bottomless pit ; for, 
says the Scripture, no murderer has eternal life. 
10 



110 THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS 

For the reasons now laid down, it appears that all op- 
posers of slavery residing in slave states, who have come 
to a full conviction of the God-dishonoring and hell-deser- 
ving nature of slaveholding, and are conscious of the sin- 
ful entanglements to which they are liable while residing in 
such a situation, together with the dangers to which they 
or their posterity must eventually be exposed, ought to 
make speedy arrangements to withdraw from the tents of 
those wicked men, by removing to some free state, lest 
they be partakers of their sins, and become sharers of their 
plagues. 

Should a slave state, in imminent danger of being over, 
come by an insurrection of the slaves, call upon a neigh, 
boring state for assistance, in either men, money, arms, 
ammunition or provisions, for the purpose of suppressing 
the slaves, no part of that assistnnce could be granted 
without contracting blood-guihiness, nor without calling 
down the judgments of God upon the nation ; and all such 
as might fall, when fighting in the defence of a cause, that 
could not even have the color of justice, might be expect, 
ed to spend an eternity in chains and darkness, wiih no 
better company than that of slaveholders. If the Legisla- 
ture of any free state should pass a law to raise troops to 
assist in suppressing the slaves of a slave state, when en- 
gaged in fighting for their natural rights, the citizens ought 
as absolutely to refuse either to take arms to fight in such 
a cause, or to hire substitutes, as the troops of King Saul 
rejected his authority, when he commanded them to slay 
the priests of the Lord. The command of even a lawful 
government cannot make it lawful for the subjects to go to 
war except the cause is just; if it is unjust, obedience is 
murder, and open rebellion against God, whose law con- 
demns murderers under pain of death. 

Query, — Could a slave state, by virtue of the Federal 
Constitution have a legal claim upon the Federal Govern- 
ment for assistance to suppress an insurrection of the 
slaves ? 

Answer. — No slave state could have any legal claim on 
the Federal Government for assistance to suppress an in- 
surrection of the slaves ; because slavery is directly con- 



RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. Ill 

trary to the Federal Constitution ; and those laws of state 
le^islalures which ratify slavery are unconstitutional laws. 
The Federal Constitution declares that all men are created 
free, and have equal rights ; therefore the Federal Govern- 
ment might refuse to grant the smallest assistance. 
They might reject a demand of this sort on the same prin- 
ciple that our federal courts refuse to determine causes in 
conformity to an unconstitutional law. That law which 
sanctions slavery, is not only unjust, but unconstitutional, 
and every attempt to suppress an insurrection of the slaves 
has for its object the support of an unconstitutional prac- 
tice, and all attempts to help slaveholders to keep their 
slaves in subjection are opposed to the moral law, and to 
the Federal Constitution. 

When it is here asserted that the Federal Constitution 
condemns slavery, it is not to be understood that that in- 
strument, in its present form, contains an explicit repre- 
hension of slavery, but it means that the foundation and 
ground work of the Constitution condemns the practice in 
the most clear and explicit form. See Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, page 1st : " We hold these truths to be self- 
evident, that all men are created equal ; that tliey are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights— 
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness — that to secure these rights, governments are institut- 
ed among men, deriving their just powers from the con- 
sent or the governed ; that whenever any form of govern- 
ment beconnes destructive of these ends, it is the right of 
the people to alter or abolish it, and to constitute a new 
government most likely to effect their safety and happi- 
ness." In the same declaration the very same reasons 
which are laid down to justify the independence of Ameri- 
ca, would form a juster plea for the slaves of any country 
to take the same measures to emancipate themselves from 
bondage, which the American people did to obtain their in- 
dependence. In the close of this declaration, the Congress 
who justly style themselves the representatives of the peo- 
pie, bind themselves in all their future proceedings to act 
agreeable to these equal rights, which are here asserted. 
Page 7. '' And for the support of this declaration, with a 
firm reliance on the protection of Divine providence, we 



112 THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS 

mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and 
our sacred honors." 

Signed by order of the Congress, * 

JOHN HAN COCK, Prm^en^. 

Charles Thompson, Secretary. 

That this Declaration of Independence was the founda- 
tion of the Federal Constitution, is manifest, 

First. — Because the members of Congress, informing 
the Declaration of Independence, acted as representatives 
of the nation. 

Second. — The Declaration of Independence exhibited the 
moral ground on which the nation could justify herself 
in acting as a pohtical body, independent of Great Britain. 

Third. — The equal rights which the nation by her repre- 
sentatives, had then bound herself to maintain and defend, 
being secured, was an encouragement to the people not 
only to prosecute the war with firmness, but to expect that 
any future form of constitution which might be adopted, 
would correspond with the principles of equal rights es- 
tablished in the Declaration of Independence. 

It appears that the Declaration of Independence was the 
only federal constitution that existed in the United States 
until the articles of confederation were ratified, July 9, 
1779, the third year of independence, wliich articles 
perfectly correspond with the Declaration of Independence 
relative to the rights of men. That instrument of confed- 
eration, now called the Federal Constitution, was not ratified 
until the twelfth year of American independence. It is so 
far from diflfering from the Declaration of Independence, 
that slavery is not once named in any of its articles. In 
section 9, it is said — " The migration or importation of 
such persons as any of the states now existing shall think 
proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress 
prior to 1803" — but whether the persons so imported 
were allowed to be convicts, redemptioners, or any other 
voluntary servants, is not said ; but one thing is certain, 
they are not called slaves, neither could the migration of 
slaves be tolerated by the Constitution in any way consist- 
ent with the Declaration of Independence, which was its 
foundation. Suppose that clause should be so construed as 
to tolerate the importation of servants under bonds 



RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 113 

for debt, or rcdemptioners, it will not authorise the im- 
portation of slaves, to be subject to unmerited, hereditary 
slavery. 

Under article 4, section 2, it is said — " No person held 
to service or labor in any state under the laws thereof, 
escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or 
regulation therein be discharj][ed from such service or la- 
bor, but shall be delivered upon the claim of the party to 
whom such service or labor may be due." The design 
of this section was to protect the legislative authorities of 
all the individual states over their respective subjects, by 
preventing any one state from making laws relative to 
servants, which might prevent the free operation of the 
laws of any other state, and allow to each government a 
right and power of determining all causes in which its own 
people were peculiarly implicated. This section by no 
means recognizes the practice of holding men in a state of 
unmerited bondage, as being morally just, yet it seems to 
imply a kind of timid recognition of slavery as being po- 
litically right. If slaveholding is morally wrong, agreea- 
ble to the Declaration of Independence, it cannot be moral- 
ly right for one state to deliver up the fugitive slaves of 
another, to be again subject to unjust bondage. 

Secondly.— Can a gospel minister faithfully discharge 
his duty without testifying against slavery? 

Answer. — It is impossible for a gospel minister to dis- 
charge his official duty in its full extent without pointing 
out the whole duty of man, and reprobating every thing 
that is dishonoring to God, and ruinous to the souls of 
men. Therefore, in order to discharge his duty to God, 
and also to acquit his own conscience, he is bound both 
in public and in private to testify against slavery. A 
minister's duty is not only to preach to sinners deliverance 
from eternal condemnation, but also to show the necessity 
of salvation from the habit and practice of sin, without 
which no one can enter tiie kingdom of God, and in par- 
ticular to testify again>t the practice of slaveholding, as well 
as against every other flagrant violation of the moral law; 
neither is there any other method so likely to bring about 
general emancipation of the slaves. Had all denomina- 
tions of Christians in our nation, proceeded in this way, at 
10* 



1 14 DUTY OF CHRISTIANS RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 

the commencement of American independence, and con- 
tinued tlieir faithfnl exertions until this time, there would 
have been no occasion in our day for that disagreeable 
distinction in the American republic, of free states and 
slave states. 

Secondly. — There is a time which calls forth the honest 
exertions of an ambassador of Christ, in dealing with the 
minds and consciences of men, more loudly than any oth- 
er season ; that is, when a slaveholder is about to take his 
departure from time, and appear before the tribunal of 
God, when a minister is called upon to visit such a per- 
son, in that solemn crisis, his indispensable duty is to deal 
honestly with him, and like a skilful physician to probe 
his wounds to the bottom ; he ought to treat him with the 
same heroic boldness as Eli did Ahab, or that prophet who 
faithfully reproved king Ama for his gross idolatry. With 
peculiar energy he ought to lay before him the unparallel- 
ed aggravation of the crime of slaveholding, his absolute 
need of faith, repentance, and reformation, without which 
he cannot expect to enter the kingdom of God. That in- 
stead of departing out of time, by entailing unmerited, he- 
reditary bondage upon his neighbors, he is bound by the 
law and the prophets to love them as himself, and show 
forth his love by setting them at liberty. He may lay 
before him the vast extent of the Divine law, its spirituality 
and holiness, and direct him to compare these with his 
own heart and life, and in particular his keeping his 
fellow creatures in bondage, without giving them what is 
just and equal according to their labor, together with the 
other evils which are necessarily attached to slavery, but 
especially to show him the inconceivable wretchedness 
that soul must experience in the eternal world, that has 
departed this life with not only the aggravations of guilt, 
which are common to human life, but in the commission 
of a crime, which grants a charter to his own posterity to 
continue in the perpetration of the same to the end of the 
world, while it entails bondage and wretchedness upon the 
present generation of slaves, and also upon their posterity 
to the end of time. He may show them that if transient 
acts of wickedness will subject a sinner to the vengeance 
of hell-fire, how inconceivably dreadful must the condition 
be of that man, who in his expiring moments, commits a 



SOLILOQUY FOR A DYING SLAVEHOLDER. 115 

crime that lives in its effecis and actual operation, by an 
arithmetical progression with his own posterity to the day 
of judgment, and in its bitter consequences upon the slaves 
to the same period. He may show him also that the sin 
of ratifying those dreadful entailments has one peculiar 
trait, which will prodigiously augment its critninality, that 
is the easy and ready way of getting rid of both the sin and 
the punishment which is the insertion of one item in his 
last will that will liberate all his slaves ; this itself cuts off 
the possibility of hereditary sinning from his own poster- 
ity to the end of the world, and hereditary bondage from 
the blacks to the end of the world. 

Sin committed is liable to be more or less aggravating 
in proportion to the easiness of the opposite duty required, 
as well as by the enormity of the effects liable to be pro- 
duced by the sin. And that man who is faithfully instruct- 
ed and made acquainted with the easiness of performing a 
duty of so high importance as that of liberating h^s slaves, 
and thereby preventing his own posterity from a course of 
hereditary sinning, and the slaves from hereditary misery, 
and will deliberately leave the world with those shocking 
entailments upon both, ought to go into perdition ; neither 
can any ordinary berth in that region'of despair, be adapt- 
ed to his enormous guilt. 

With what peculiar emphasis then, might the poet have 
applied these lines to the future condition of a slaveholder ; 

Unheard of tortures are reserved for such : 

These herd together, the common damn'd shun their society-' 

Looking on themselves as fiends less foul. bla.ir. 

SOLILOQUY FOR A DYING SLAVEHOLDER. 

I am now in a little time to appear in the presence of 
the great God, to give an account of all the actions of my 
life, and to be rewarded according to my works. If my 
works are those of faith in the merits of Christ, for my 
justification, and for my deliverance from the habit and 
practice of sin, and if I love God and my neighbor as 
myself, I shall receive a crown of glory as a reward of 
grace. But if I am found by the great Judge, to be want- 
ing in faith and love to God, and of that love to my neigh- 
bor which would lead me to do for him what I would that 



116 SOLILOQUY FOR A DYING SLAVEHOLDER. 

he should do to me, I may expect, in a short time, to lift 
mine eyes in hell. All my black people are my neighbors ; 
I must dispose of them in some form, that will be liable 
to fix iheir destiny in this world, after I shall have begun 
to experience the realities of eternity. I must either set 
them at liberty, or else rivet the chains of hereditary 
slavery upon them. How shall I dispose of them in a 
way conformable to that precept — " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself ? I am in a great strait ; my mind, 
now on the brink of eternity, reels to and fro. If I de- 
part this life with any one prevailing lust unmortified, I 
must perish for ever ; for the divine word shews that ex- 
cept I cut off right-hand sins, and pluck out right-eye sins, 
I cannot enter the kingdom of God. 

A very weighty business now lies before me. Whe- 
ther 1 shall, in my last will, leave those my domestics bond 
or free. Leaving them bound will empower my own 
posterity to retain them in bondage for ever ; this will 
imply a charter to all generations, to be doing either good 
or evil ; one of the two it must be. These blacks must 
also be subject to hereditary slavery with its comphcated 
horrors to the end of time, and these miseries must be ex- 
tended to all branches of their posterity, though they 
should amount to millions. 

Their gross ignorance will be liable to prevent them 
from a knowledge of the gospel, and obstruct their salva- 
tion. If I should set them at liberty it would tend to un- 
lock the bars of ignorance, which lie in their way to hap- 
piness, both temporal and eternal, and cut off all the mise- 
ries of slavery from them and their posterity for ever. 
But should I set them at liberty, it may, in a measure, 
reduce my widow and fatherless children to want. When 
I take a serious view of the station 1 at this moment occu- 
py in the moral world, I tremble at myself. My respon- 
sibility to God relative to my slaves, is truly awful. I 
now possess a power above the control of all men, by one 
act, to prevent my own posterity, to the end of the world, 
from enslaving them and their children. By the same 
act I can secure hberty to these slaves and their posterity 
for ever, and therewith prevent all the miseries of slavery. 
All these wonderful effects, which are of infinite importance, 



SOLILOQUY FOR A DYING SLAVEHOLDER. 117 

I can instantly accomplish by having one item inserted 
in my last will, to liberate the slaves I now possess, and 
this will secure freedom to all their succeeding generations ; 
on the contrary, I possess a power, independent of all 
men, to give to my posterity a charter to continue them 
in slavery, with all its horrors, to the end of time. I can, 
without being accountable to men, decide this great and 
important cause as I will ; yet in whatever way 1 deter- 
mine the matter, I must be accountable to God for it. Let 
me summon all my deliberative faculties in this portentous 
crisis, and come to a final determination. Can I now 
appeal to Ctoc), with all the solemnity of an oath, as I shall 
in a few hours answer to him, that I believe it to be my 
indispensable duty to rivet the chains of unmerited heredi- 
tary slavery, with all its concomitant miseries, upon these 
my fellow creatures and neighbors, to the end of time, and 
empower my children, and their children's children, to be 
executors of that deed. And can I, in consequence of 
this important transaction, look forward with a well 
grounded hope of receiving a gracious congratulation re- 
lative to this deed — " Well done, good and faithful servant, 
enter into the joy of thy Lord ?" I cannot ; it is impossible. 
Let me then commit my wife and children to the care and 
protection of a merciful God, who has promised to be the 
orphan's stay, and the widow's judge ; for it is better for 
them to fall into the hands of the Lord, than into the hands 
of slaves. I will now, while in the land of the living and 
place of repentance, set them all at liberty, and at once 
open a way for the deliverance of them and their posterity 
from ignorance and wretchedness, to the end of the world, 
and prevent my own posterity, for ever, from exercising 
tyranny over them: so help me God. 

The affecting scene of a dying slaveholder, bequeathing 
his estate to his heirs, is so well represented by a judicious 
writer on the subject of slavery, that we shall transcribe 
his statement verbatim. To see a man, (a Chris- 
tian,) in the most serious part of his life, making his last 
will and testament, and in the most solemn manner ad- 
dressing the judge of all the earth— "In the name of God, 
Amen.'' 

Hearken to him ; he certainly must be in earnest. He 



119 . PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT. 



is closing all his concerns here below. He will very 
shortly appear before the Judge, where kings and slaves 
will have equal thrones. 
He proceeds — 

Item. I give and bequeath to my son a 

negro man, named a negro woman, named 

with five of her young children. 

Item. I give and bequeath to my daughter 
a negro man, named also a negro -woman 

named with her three children. 

Item. All my other slaves, whether men, women, or children, 
with all my stock of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, I direct to be 
sold to the highest bidder, and the monies arising therefrom, (after 
paying my just debts,) to be equally divided between my two above 
named children. 

Suppose, for a moment, that the testator, or if the owner 
dies intestate, (which is often the case,) was ever so hu- 
mane a person, who can vouch for his heirs and successors ? 
This consideration, if nothing else, ought to make all slave- 
holders take heed what they do, for they must give an 
account of themselves to God. Barrow. 



CHAPTER XII. 



practical improvement. 



The reader will perceive that the present work is not 
a sermon ; yet, as the general subject is of a most serious 
nature, so as deeply to concern the eternal states of men, 
it may not be amiss to conclude with a practical improve- 
ment. 

. I. From what has been said of the real character of a 
slaveholder — how his authority over his slaves contravenes 
the authority of God's law relative to the slaves, and inter- 
cepts and prevents all relative duties between husbands 
and wives, parents and children, and turns the entire sys- 
tem of obedience due from the slaves, both to God and 
man, into a channel of honor and profit to himself — it ap- 
pears that slaveholder, considered as a term expressive 
of his station, office, and usurped authority, is a name of 



PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT. 119 

blasphemy, and, like that of the Devil, ought not to be 
mentioned but with horror, and when imperious necessity 
requires it. 

II. From the view that has been taken of the enor- 
mous criminality of slaveholding, let no one rashly con- 
elude, that, in the great scale cf providential events, it is 
so far a nuisance in the moral world, as to answer no 
good purpose ; for, upon mature consideration, it will be 
Ibund to answer some valuable ends, both to display the 
justice of God, and to elucidate some of the other great 
doctrines of Divine revelation. 

In the whole volume of Divine providence, there is no 
one thing which shows the absolute necessity of a hell, 
more than the practice of involuntary, unmerited, heredit- 
ary slavery. This will appear, 

fi'lrst — From the aggravation of the crime. The pecu- 
liar aggravation of the crime lies, not so much in hard 
treatment of the slaves, as in the station, office, and power 
of the slaveholder ; all of which he voluntarily usurps, 
and entails hereditary bondage upon the slaves to the end 
of the world. The slaveholder may withhold a due allow- 
ance of food and clothing ; but facts of this kind arc only 
transient evils. He may abuse them by stripes, bruises, 
and maiming ; but all these are transient acts of injustice. 
But to hold men in a state of slavery, and entail it upon 
them and their posterity to the end of the world, if he was 
to treat him ever so well in his own time, is that in which 
the most deadly criminality lies. The effects of transient 
acts of injustice are liable to be transient ; but this lives, 
in its tremendous effects, long after the slaveholder is dead. 
So that if the wisdom of angels was employed for ages, in 
search of epithets to depict the shocking nature of that 
sin, they would come far short of their object ; yea, if they 
were to range heaven, earth, and hell for metaphors, 
tropes, and figures, to express its multifarious horrors, 
they must still fall short. It would be like an attempt to 
measure eternity by an addition of finite periods ; there- 
fore, the peculiar aggravation of the crime is an evidence 
of the certainty of a hell. 

Secondly — Agreeable to the laws of every slave state 
the owners of slaves are in no respect (with a very few 



120 INFINITE EVIL OF SLAVEHOLDING. 

exceptions) amenable to any human laws for their con. 
duct towards their slaves ; but may rob them of ther lib- 
erty, their children, their wages, may beat and abuse them 
at pleasure, and trample upon all their natural rights and 
natural relations, and, by their authority, supersede all 
moral obligations arising from these relations, and, in 
their last will, entail all that complication of miseries up- 
on their posterity to perpetual generations. Therefore, 
when we look upon slaveholding as an assemblage of all 
the most capital outrages upon moral justice that can come 
under our inspection, and consider that the conduct of 
those tyrants, throughout the whole, is entirely out of the 
reach of justice in this world, it is a most striking and 
conspicuous evidence of the certainty of a hell, that slave- 
holders and all such as escape the justice of Grod admin- 
istered by man in this world may meet with a due reward 
from the hand of God in the world to come. 

Thirdly — Slaveholding is an amplification of the Scrip- 
tural doctrine of the fall of man. For when we take a 
view of the monstrous injustice, cruelty, and the abuse of 
every moral relation subsisting in the human family, im- 
plied in the practice, and all in open hostility to the very 
light of nature, as well as divine revelation, we may at 
once conclude, that this cannot be man's primitive state, 
as he came from the hands of a holy God. But man's 
nature is depraved, and the state of bondage and wretch- 
edness in which the slaves are placed correspond there- 
with, and exemplifies the truth of that Scripture, the mis. 
ery of man is great upon him. 

III. Slaveholding, considered in its nature and tendency, 
affords a notable argument to prove the infinite evil of sin. 
Sin is said to be an infinite evil, not from the quantity of 
the action, but from hs tendency to dishonor God's infi- 
nite character ; so the infinite evil of slaveholding is not 
estimated by the quantity of the act, but by its tendency, 
which is infinite. 

When a slaveholder, by his last will, leaves his slaves 
in a state of hereditary bondage, his crime, in the first in- 
stance, has the same essential properties of an infinite evil 
with any other sin : but, as it relates to futurity, its evil 
tendency is infinite, in a manner peculiar to itself. As, 



INFINITE EVIL OF SLAVEHOLDING. 121 

First — It entails a course of perpetual sinning on his 
posterity, as he leaves his slaves in their possession, with 
a right and power to entail the same authority to their 
children, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, in his last will, 
he gives to his posterity a charter and power to continue 
the crime to the end of the world. It will not prevent the 
evil from being infinite in its nature and tendency, that 
some of the succeeding generations may cut off the en- 
tailment by setting the slaves at liberty ; because the ob- 
ject of his last will, and the power that it conveyed to his 
posterity, was to entail bondage upon them to the end of 
the world. 

This entailment being cut off by the end of the world, 
will not change the nature and tendency of the act of en- 
tailing implied in the slaveholder's last will ; because, if 
there was to be a succession of generations to eternity, it 
could make no difference as to the act of entailing: be- 
cause, if by his last will he can fix the entailment upon 
the first generation that succeeds him, he may equally fix 
the entailment upon all succeeding generations, and if the 
succession was to be endless, it would be the same: there- 
fore, the moral tendency of slaveholding is, to establish 
in the slaveholder's posterity a succession of sinning, and 
that of the highest aggravation, to all eternity. 

Secondly — It entails a curse of perpetual misery upon 
the slaves, so that the infinite evil of the sin of slavehold- 
ing may be proved from its tendency in relation to the 
slaves upon wiiom the effects of the sin fall j so that all 
their ignorance of God, and all their wickedness and de- 
filement of speech and behavior which natively flow from 
their ignorance, and all the miseries which belong to a 
state of slavery, are by his deed entailed upon them, and 
all that complication of horrors, both moral and natural, 
he entails upon all generations ; and if the generations 
were to continue to eternity, it would be the same : so 
that the man who, at his death, leaves his slaves in bond- 
age, commits sin that empowers his posterity to repeat 
the same crime to all eternity. It is also a moral ground, 
to cause an eternal punishment to be inflicted upon the 
innocent, who are not supposed, even by the slaveholders 
themselves, to merit such treatment. Thev are the trans. 
11 



122 INFINITE EVIL OF SLAVEHOLDING. 

gressors, while the punishment comes upon the innocent. 
Who then could suppose that slaveholders would attempt 
to deny the infinite evil of sin, or dispute the eternity of 
punishment, while, by their own practice, they give such 
notable examples of both ? Yet it is no uncommon thing 
to find slaveholders most avowed enemies to the infinite 
evil of sin, and to the doctrine of eternal punishment. 

But the highest evidence of the infinite evil of slave- 
holding, is its tendency to cause the eternal damnation of 
all that are enslaved. Ignorance of every branch of liter- 
ature is a necessary appendage of slavery, which implies 
an utter unacquaintance with God's word, and this pre- 
vents them from a knowledge of their lost condition by 
nature as guilty and depraved, and from a knowledge of 
the method of justification through faith in Christ, and of 
regeneration by the Holy Spirit, without which none can 
be saved. 

The word of God binds all heads of families to instruct 
their families in the knowledge of that word, and shews 
that all who neglect this duty must be exposed to the wrath 
of God. But how great m.ust be their guilt and exposure 
to Divine. vengeance who will neither instruct the ig- 
norant themselves, nor suifer them to be taught; and al- 
though the holder of slaves should be ever so faithful in 
teaching the generation that are immediately under his 
inspection, if at his death he entails hereditary bondage 
upon them, he does his utmost to entail ignorance 
upon them to the end of the world, or to shut them 
out from a knowledge of acceptance through faith in Jesus 
Christ. — Ezek. iii. 18 : " When I say unto the wicked 
thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, 
nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to 
save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniqui- 
ty, but his blood will 1 require at thine hand." The 
slaves are both wicked and grossly ignorant, while their 
cruel tyrants will neither instruct them themselves, nor 
sufTer them to be instructed by others, in order that they 
might forsake their evil ways and live, but entail ignor- 
ance upon them to perpetual generations; and if a suc- 
cession of generations was to continue to eternity, the act 
of entailing bondage upon them would naturally tend to 



GRADUAL EMANCIPATION. 123 

subject them all to ignorance, and occasion their eternal 
condemnation ; and farther, the posterity of the slaves 
which are left in bondage by the last will of the testator 
are liable to multiply to infinity, which will naturally oc- 
casion an infinity of eternal penalties, in proportion to the 
number of subject?. A slaveholder, then, who by his last 
will and testament leaves his slaves in bondage, commits 
a crime that tends to produce an eternity of sinning with 
his own posterity, an eternity of slavery to the blacks, an 
eternity of damnation to them, and an infinity of eternal 
penalties. If all these infinities of evils are native con- 
sequences of his last will and testament, what idea can be 
formed of the eternal state of the testator himself. 

GRADUALISM. 

The foregoing investigation of slavery has been restrict- 
ed to perpetual hereditary slavery. But there isanother 
branch of slavery which is practised in some states, which 
though of less aggravation, partakes of the same kind of 
moral turpitude with the former; it is that of holding the 
blacks in bondage, until they arrive at the age of 28 
years. This practice, when compared with the other, 
must be less criminal, and is liable to afford some reliefto 
the oppressed. 

But it seems to resemble the practice of some thieves, 
who content themselves with pilfering articles of little 
value, and small sums of money, but have not courage to 
rob on the highway. The evils of this partial degree of 
slavery, are the following : 

First — The slaves are kept in ignorance as well as 
bondage, until they arrive to the age of 28. 

Second — They are robbed of seven years of time, of 
liberty and the profits of their labor. 

If it is lawful to hold a man in bondage until he is 
twenty-eight years of age, it must bo equally lawful to 
hold him to the day of his death; and if it is sinful to 
hold him to the day of his death, it must partake of the 
same species of crime, to hold him until he is twenty- 
eight. 

Again; that part of human life which lies between the 
years of 21 and 28, is that period in which marriages are 



124 CONCLUSION. 

apt to be contracted, and families begin to increase, while 
all children born to parents in a state of bondage, must 
remain under bonds until the same periods in which their 
parents are allowed to go free, to wit: the females at 25, 
and the males at 28 ; the blacks then lose that part of their 
time which is the most proper to cultivate their minds 
with useful learning, and to lay up something for the 
support of their families. But when persons pass the age 
of twenty. eight, without learning and without any proper- 
ty, they are not liable to make proficiency in the acquisi- 
tion of either. 

Third — The holders of such slaves, having no pros- 
pect of deriving any profit from them after their 28th 
year, are liable, not only to entirely neglect their educa- 
tion, but also to treat them with great severity, in order to 
extort from them as much profit as they possibly can, be- 
fore the time of iheir emancipation. 

On account then, of 28 years of slavery, and the ignor- 
ance and degradation which are consequences of it; on 
account also of the loss of seven years, at a time most fa- 
vorable to receive the rudiments of education, and to pre- 
pare something for the support of families, we cannot ex- 
pect that a law which emancipates the slaves at the age of 
28 years, and will admit of their being kept in ignorance 
and misery to that time, will do much to promote either 
the temporal or eternal happiness of the blacks. 

CONCLUSION. 

Let all the warm and zealous friends of emancipation 
take heed to themselves, and examine their own hearts as 
to the foundations they are building upon for eternal life. 
Although slaveholding will without repentance and re- 
formation take a man to hell, a warm zeal and active ser- 
vice in the business of emancipation will not take a man 
to heaven. By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justi- 
fied. If our zeal and activity in the cause of emancipa- 
tion, is joined with a faith's reliance on the atoning sacri- 
fice of Christ, for the justification of our persons, a regard 
to the word of God, as a rule of duty and a dependence 
on the Holy Spirit for strength to lead holy lives, and that 
agreeable to the Divine rule, we do actually lead holy 



CONCLUSION. 12ft 

lives — lives of habitual conformity to the will of God, 
and faithfulness towards men ; then our persons arid 
services will be acceptable in the sight of God, and in 
particular our zeal and activity in the cause of emanci- 
pation will be accepted as a pleasing sacrifice, and great 
will be our reward in heaven. But on the contrary, if 
our religion consists chiefly in contending for civil liberty 
in opposition to the tyranny of slaveholders, while we re- 
main unconcerned for the spiritual liberty of our own 
souls, and regardless of a holy life, we may expect with- 
out fail to have our part and portion with slaveholders, 
through the lasting ages of eternity. But what will still 
add to our degradation, we will not then occupy even the 
rank of slaveholders, but it will be that of slaves— slaves 
to the devil, and be bound in the chains of eternal justice, 
to suffer a just retribution for our aggravated guilt, and 
in particular for our abuse of that liberty, for v/hich we 
have so zealously contended in behalf of others. 



11* 



12C THE NEGRO. 



THE NEGRO. 

And shall the beams of science never shed, 
Their light benign upon the negro's head, 
Or is he destined still through life to roam. 
Bereft of hope beyond the silent tomb. 

Far from his home, across the Atlantic deep, 
To foreign climes, by rude oppression borne, 
The negro toils, and oft in silence weeps, 
Weeps for those joys, that never more return. 

Perhaps a sire, perhaps a mother dear, 

Now deeply drain the bitter cup of wo, 

For their dear child, starts forth the trickling tear. 

For him, their son, their ceaseless sorrows flow. 

Hard is that heart that thus without a sigh, 
To slavery's chains, his fellow man condemns, 
Forms not his mind to range the spheres on high, 
But leaves it deep in hopeless gloom o'erwhelmed. 

O must his toughts survey no brighter skies, 
Where pleasures dwell, where endless glories rise. 
Where the Redeemer sits enthroned above, 
In realms of light, the home of bliss and love. 

O when will every clime and every plain. 

Be cheer'd by liberty's endearing ray, 

When will strict justice force its righteous claim. 

And mercy mild, resume its long lost sway. 

Columbia speak, let slavery's dirge be sung 
Wide o'er the world. The joyful sound begun, 
Shall bid the age of crime and suff'ring cease, 
And hail the reign of freedom and of peace. 

HARP OF INDIANA, 



APPENDIX 



The foregoing- view of slavery is by no means the ef. 
feet of prejudice, against slaveholders in genera], or against 
any individuals of that class of citizens. The writer nev. 
er had any ground of complaint against them, of a per- 
sonal nature, but on the contrary has had experience of 
as polite treatment from slaveholders as from any others 
with whom he has been conversant ; but in reflecting on 
the civilities of slaveholders towards himself, compared 
with their treatment of the slaves, he has been led serious- 
ly to inquire into the fundamental reason of the strange 
disparity, and put the question to himself, "What is the 
reason these people treat me with so much kindness, while 
it cannot be in return for any service I have ever done to 
them. It cannot be because my complexion is white, 
while that of the Africans is black, for we find persons 
among them in a state of slavery of all shades of color, 
from the deepest black down to such a degree of white, 
that a tinge of African blood can hardly be discovered. 
The blacks are daily doing them service, but they nei- 
ther make them a just restitution, nor show them any ci- 
vilities. This seems like inverting the order of moral 
equity. Their politeness to me, and harshness to the 
slaves, cannot be attributed to a supreme regard to the 
law of God as a general rule of duty, for that requires 
justice before liberality ; neither can it arise from a prin- 
ciple of obedience to that second great command, " Thou 
shall love thy neighbor as thj^self ;" for that command 
would lead them to act impartially to all both black and 
white. I then conclude that this kind treatment must 



128 APPENDIX. 

arise from self love or a wish to have a great name, for 
persons of much liberality and great benevolence, and al- 
so to display their own magnificence. Therefore, the 
great reason why they do not hold me in the same condi- 
tion of wretchedness with their slaves, is because I am 
not in their power, but had they an opportunity of sub- 
jecting me to the same servile and degraded condition 
with their slaves, they would, without fail, do it. 

LAWS OF KENTUCKY AND VIRGINIA RELATIVE TO SLAVERY. 

Vol, 2, chap. 63, section 2 — "No negro or mulatto 
shall be a witness, except in plea of the commonwealth 
against negroes or mulattoes, or in civil pleas, where ne- 
groes or mulattoes alone shall be parties." This law 
though essential to the existence of slavery is directly op- 
posed to the right of man, and to the moral law, which 
binds every man according to his knowledge of facts, to 
bear witness in defence of the innocent, and for the con- 
viction of the guilty; this is a duty which all men owe to 
both God and their neighbors." 

Levit. V. 1 : " And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of 
swearing, and is witness whether he hath seen or known 
of it, if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity." 
Proverbs xxxi. 8, 9 : " Open thy mouth for the dumb in the 
cause of all such as are appointed to destruction, open 
thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the 
poor and needy." When the slaves are rendered inca- 
pable of bearing testimony in a cause pending before a 
court, they cannot bear the iniquity, but it devolves with 
peculiar weight upon the heads of those that prevent them. 

Section 3. " No slaves shall go from the tenements 
of his master or other person with whom he lives with- 
out a pass, or some letter or token whereby it may appear 
that he is proceeding by authority from his master or 
employer ; if he does, it shall be lawful for any person to 
apprehend and carry him before a justice of the peace, to 
be by his order punished with stripes or not, in his dis 
cretion." 

Section 4:. '♦ And if any slave shall presume to come 
and be upon the plantation of any person whatsoever, 
without leave in writing irom his or her owner or over- 



APPENDIX. 12d 

seer, not being sent on lawful business, it shall be lawful 
for the owner or overseer of such plantation lo give or 
order such slave ten lashes, on his or her bare back, for 
every such offence." 

Suppose a slave had a desire, and found himself bound 
by the law of God to goto visit some of his sick or dying 
friends, he could not without permission from his master. 
Suppose the slaves in a neighborhood to feel themselves 
bound by the law of God to meet together for the purpose 
of sociaf worship, they could not do it without permission 
from their masters or overseers. But for a human crea- 
ture to be under the necessity of asking permission from 
man to worship God, is an affront offered to the majesty 
of God, and the sin lies at the master's door. If the slaves 
were to attempt the duty without permission, they would 
be exposed to the cruelty of their persecutors; yet it 
would undoubtedly be their duty to act in such a case as 
Daniel did, who in the face of persecution, worshiped God, 
and left the event to himself. Dan. vi. 10. 

For any man wilfully to occupy the station of a slave- 
master, as.5uming that povvpr with whieh such are invest- 
ed by these two sections of law, so as to have an absolute 
power to restrain or tolerate the religious exercises of his 
fellow creatures at his pleasure, is to exalt himself above 
the God of heaven. 

Seciimi 5. " No negro, mulatto, or Indian whatsoever, 
shall keep or carry any gunpowder, shot, club, or 
other weapon whatsoever, offensive or defensive, but all 
and every gun, weapon and ammunition found in the pos- 
session oV custody of any negro, mulatto, or Indian, may 
be seized by any person ; and upon due proof made be- 
fore any justice of the peace of the county where such 
seizure' shall be. shall, by his order, be forfeited to the 
seizer for his own use : and moreover, every such offend, 
er shall have and receive, by order of such justice, any 
number of lashes not exceeding thirty-nine, on his or her 
back, well laid on, for every such offence." 

Agreeable to this section, the most palpable robbery, 
the most undisguised cruelty and atrocious covetousness 
are all established by law, w'hich will preclude every con- 
scientious Christian from ever officiating as a justice of 



130 APPENDIX. 

the peace, a constable, sheriff, or judge of a court, in any 
slave state where such laws exist ; and exist they must 
wherever slavery exists. 

It appears that among the whole black list of hell-de- 
serving crimes in our world, no one will establish a man's 
title to perdition with greater certainty than slaveholding, 
yet every sin has its appendages as well as slavery. If 
sin must be defended or supported, it can only be done by 
sin. Slaveholding is a most heinous sin. Hence all 
laws which are made to support it are sinful ; yet all 
are essential to the permanent existence of slavery in 
any state. 

The seventh section prohibits, by a heavy fine, every 
head of a family from admitting his neighbor's slave to be 
or remain on his premises more than four hours at a time, 
without permission from the owner or overseer. And 
every owner or overseer is by the same act made liable to 
pay a heavy fine, who will suffer more than five slaves, 
other than his own, to be or remain on his plantation at 
any one time. 

The next section grants indulgence to the slave*? to meet 
together on the Lord's day, if licensed in writing by their 
masters or overseers. 

As these two acts imply the essence of tyranny, so they 
put a final stop to any successful methods of teaching the 
slaves in schools, whether on the Sabbath or any other day, 
and make the master to be the entire director of the 
slave's religion ; for they cannot meet together for the 
worship of God without a written license from the master 
or overseer. 

The tenth section subjects every white person to a fine 
of fifteen shillings, or twenty lashes well laid on, if found 
in company with slaves, at any unlawful meeting, or that 
shall harbor or entertain any slave, without the consent of 
the owner. Agreeable to this section, no minister of the 
gospel can preach to a congregation of blacks, without 
exposing himself to persecution, because any number of 
slaves above five, is an unlawful meeting. See sect. 10. 

The next section lays all justices, sheriffs, and consta 
bes, under heavy penalties, who will fail to suppress all 
unlawful meetings of the slaves. 



APPENDIX. 131 

The twelfth section prohibits all free persons to buy, 
sell, or receive any coin or commodity from a slave, with- 
out the consent of the owner or overseer, under the pe- 
nalty of four times the value of the article bought, sold or 
received, with costs of action upon the case. 

Section 13. "If any negro, mulalto or Indian, bond or 
free, shall at any time lift his or her hand in opposition to 
any person not being a negro, mulatto or Indian, he or she 
so offending, shall for every such offence, proved by the 
oath of the party before a justice of the peace of the 
county where such offence shall be committed, receive 
thirty lashes, on his or her hare back, well laid on, by 
order of such justice." 

This law makes no allowance for self-defence, in the 
case of a negro lifting his hand, neither does it make a 
difference between lifting the hand in a mere threatening 
attitude, and that of actually striking a blow, nor any al- 
lowance on account of the character or behavior of the 
person against whom he may lift his hand : but the negro 
is liable to be insulted by the vilest miscreants, to be struck 
and trampled upon by impudent children, and vile drunk- 
ards, without the privilege of defending himself. 

The eighteenth section provides, that in consequence 
of a slave being duly convicted of a capital crime, thirt)- 
days shall be allowed him, between his sentence and exe- 
cution, except in cases of conspiracy, insurrection or re- 
bellion, that is, except he should be convicted of some one' 
or more of those acts of bravery, which would, if com- 
mitted by his judges, entitle them to the highest applause, 
were they in the condition of slaves in Africa. 

By an act of the Virginia legislature in 1804, all night 
meetings of the blacks were prohibited, but afterwards in 
a revised code may be seen an amendment, to the follow- 
ing import : 

" Nothing in the said act shall prevent the master or 
overseer of slaves, from carrying, or permitting his, her 
or their slave or slaves, to go with him, her or them, or 
with any part of his, her or their family, to any place for 
the purpose of religious worship, provided that such 
worship be conducted by a regularly ordained white rain- 



132 APPENDIX. 

This act implies bloody persecution in its whole struc* 
ture. 

First — The slaves are restrained from meeting togeth- 
er, for public worship, except some of their tyrants are 
with them. 

Second — They are liable to be prevented, for the most 
part, from ever enjoying the privilege of attending public 
worship, for this reason, that slave tyrants are not apt to be 
in the habit of attending places of public worship, but are 
liable to spend their Sabbaths in idleness and recreations. 

Third — If the slaves should thus bo permitted to at- 
tend upon public worship, they must of necessity be go- 
verned by their master's viev/s of religion, in respect to 
the doctrine taught by the preacher. The amount of the 
whole matter is, that except the slaves can in conscience 
agree with their master's religious system, they must by 
force be restrained from all public ordinances. 

Fourth — If the preacher should not be a white man, 
however sound in tlie faith, able in doctrine, and profita- 
ble in his public administrations, they must not show them- 
selves among his hearers, either with their masters or 
without them. All these restrictions are most open and 
undisguised restraints on the consciences of men ; and 
if the slaves should refuse submission to the inquisitorial 
acts by attempting to worship God agreeable to the dic- 
tates of their own consciences, the), would lirst be put to the 
torture. Should they still persist in their integrity, they 
would be liable to suffer death. 

Many slaveholders grant that to hold men in slavery is 
wrong; but sound policy makes it necessary to keep them 
in bondage, because of the dangerous consequences which 
might result from their general emancipation. But if 
slaveholding is a moral evil, no supposed consequences will 
justify a continuance of the practice. We might as well 
argue that because a man has fled from society for rob- 
bery and murder he is in duty bound to coniinue^those prac- 
tices for his support, lest if he appear in public he will be 
liable to be brought to justice. God's word forbids us to 
do evil that good may come. If this command forbids 
the smallest aggravation of sin to serve our worldly inte- 
rest or safety, what shall we say of slaveholding, which 



APPENDIX. 138 

is'the very acme of sin, that concentrates into one focus 
all the most capital violations of the moral law. But we 
have no reason to conclude that even a general emancipa- 
tion of the slaves would occasion any insurmountable dif- 
ficulties, while a God of providence governs the world ; 
but although universal devastation was to be the certain 
consequence of a general emancipation, it would be infi- 
nitely better to suffer in our bodies and estates in time, 
than to dishonor God, and be cast soul and body into hell- 
fire, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched. 

REPLY TO MR. HARRIS. 

'"^" A certain Mr. Harris, who has written in favor of 
slavery, makes use of the fact related in the 47th chapter 
of Genesis to justify the practice of slavery. Verse 23 : 
" Then Joseph said unto the people. Behold I have bought 
you this day and your land for Pharaoh. Lo, here is food 
for you, and ye shall sow the land, and it shall ccme to 
pass in the increase, that you shall give the fifth part unto 
Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own for seed of the 
field, for your food and for them of your household, and 
for food for your little ones. And they said, Thou hast 
saved our lives, let us find grace in the sight of my lord, 
and we will be Pharaoh's servants. And Joseph made 
it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pha- 
raoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the 
priests, which became not Pharaoh's." 

From the narrative of this transaction, it is evident, 1. 
That Joseph's purchase of the Egyptians for Pharaoh did 
not make them slaves to him, but only tenants. 2. Joseph in 
this whole transaction acted as an agent for Pharaoh ; 
what he did was not to aggrandize himself, but its ultimate 
tendency related to the king and his subjects. 3. When 
he established the rent of the land at one-fifth of the in- 
crease, Pharaoh was equally bound to let them have their 
lands for the fifth, and had no power to exact more, and 
this covenant between Pharaoh and his subjects was 
made binding to perpetual generations, as the words in 
verse 26 show : "And Joseph made it a law over the land 
of Egypt unto this day." 4. It is evident that one-fifth 
12 



134 APPENDIX. 

was all the tribute that the renters of lands were obliged 
to pay to the kiiii^, wliich when collccterl from all parts of 
the empire would make a revenue sufficient to support 
the government. 

We shall now inquire whether this new finaneial scheme 
tended to injure or to promote the general welfare of the 
nation ; and. first, it established upon a permanent founda- 
tion an ample support to government. 

Secondhj — It secured to the people from generation to 
generation a competent support, by establishing to them 
an inalienable right to four-fifihs of the increase of the 
lands, and thus prevented them from ever being subject to 
the mei'cy of oppressive landlords. It is a well known 
fact th^.t the lands of all countrips which are long inhabited, 
become the exclusive property of an opulent few, while 
the great mass of the people become renters, and that the 
rule by whicli land-holders let their fields or farms to in- 
dividuals, is not by the intrinsic value of the increase, or 
what they m;iy lawfully exact from the rentqr, but what 
is the liighest he can pay consistent with his bare subsis- 
tence. In many parts of liie United States it is common 
for renters to pay one-half the increase of the soil ; but ia 
most of European countries, after rents are paid, toll, 
tribute and custom discharged, most of renters would 
count themselves very safe if they could save one-fifth. 
Joseph's plan, while it restrained the power of the king 
from ever demanding more than the fifth, it .secured the 
people against the unbounded avarice of landlords. The 
king was landlord of the whole, and he was bcund by an 
established rule, beyond which he could not go. 

Thus it appears that Joseph's method of buying the 
Egyptians and their lands, was so far from enslaving 
them, that it was the wisest plan that ever was or could 
be invented to secure them against beinsf slaves either to 
the king or to one another : and it is highly probable that 
the establishment of this wise scheme was the cause that 
Egypt at an early period excelled all other kingdoms in 
wealth, power and learning, and an experience of its happy 
effects might have been a reason why the Egyptians dei- 
fied Joseph after his death. 



ArrENDix. 135 

A MnTTioD rnoposED TO rnnvF.NT any dangerous con- 
sequences FR03I A GENERAL EMANCITATION OF THE 
SLAVES. 

AlthoijfTh it is impossible to hold any of mankind in a 
state of unmcritod, involuntary, hereditary slavery, without 
contracting guilt, yet in efTccting their general emancipu- 
tion, such a method ought to he adopted as in the event 
will be most likely to prove a benefit to the blacks when 
free, and be no detriment to the peace of society at 
large. 

With much diffidence we shall suggest the following 
method. 

First. In connection with the law of general emanci- 
pation, let laws be made for a time to govern them when 
free, wiiich will in some respects be only an improvement 
of some of those laws which were formerly made to go- 
vern them when in a state of bondage. Let the blacks 
when free have the privilege of education, without re- 
straint. 

SecoivVy. Let them be admitted to bear testimony in 
courts of justice as soon as they are competent to know 
the nature of an oath. 

Tliirilly, Let no black person be found traveling more 
than miles from his place of residence, without he 

can give a satisfactory account of liis business, or have 
a pass from a magistrate. 

. Fourthlij. Let no black man be seen carrying a gun or 
any destructive weapon without license from a magistrate 
or some other official character. 

Fifthly. Let the blacks have a right to buy, sell, and 
traffic with the whites in any form they may see fit. 

Sixthly. Let them have the privilege of meeting to- 
gether for public worship without any restraint. 

Seventhly. Let patroles be contiikued for some time in 
every district where the blacks are numerous, but let 
them have no power to beat or in any way abuse a black 
person, should they find him transgressing the law, but let 
them take him to a magistrate to have his cause tried.^ 

Eighthly. Let magistrates have full power for a timo 



136 APPENDIX, 

to take cognizance of all petty crimes of the blacks, but 
let none such be tried but by a jury of from six to twelve 
men, and to prevent jealousies, and encourage the blacks, 
one-half of such juries might be of the blacks. 

Ninthly, — Where the blacks are numerous in a district, 
let magistrates and constables be proportionably nume- 
rous. 



NOTE. 

The "Appendix" is retained here, because it was a part of the 
original publication, and not because it is deemed an appropriate 
conclusion to so masterly an argument. It may, however, be in- 
structive, even now, on two points ; one is, to show by an actual 
experiment, that a clear exhibition of the sinfulness of slavery and 
the duty of immediate emancipation, but accompanied with prac- 
tical provisions for degrading and disfranchising the freed man, 
did not in fact render the doctrine at all more palatable to the 
slaveholders, than it has been since, when coupled with the un- 
compromising demands of " modern abolition ;" and the other is, 
that the clearest exhibitions of cin and duty in the case fell power- 
less upon the public mind, until in the year 1831, they were faith- 
fully and fearlessly carried out to their just conclusions, and embo- 
died in a public society for the purpose of carrying them into ef- 
fect. In no other way can it be rationally accounted for, that a 
work, written with such power, should have fallen so ineffectual 
upon the public mind, and passed so soon into entire oblivion. — Ed- 

New York, 1840. 



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